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THE SCRIBNER SERIES OF 

MODERN POETS 

Each complete in one volume. With portrait. 

8vo. Cloth, $2.50 ne^ Half Morocco, 

$6.00 net 

robert louis stevenson 
Henry van Dyke 
Sidney Lanier 
Eugene Field 
George Meredith 
William Ernest Henley 
American Poetry 

Edited by PERCY H. BOYNTON 



Edgar Allan poe 
h. c. bunner 

8vo. Cloth, $2.00 net. Half Morocco, 
$6.00 net 



POEMS <^ 

BY 

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY 



POEMS 

BY 

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY 



The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, 
Though to itself it only live and die. 

SHAKESPEARE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1919 



^^-^"^ 



4'??' 



.h%^ 



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First Edition^ January ^ itifi 

■ Second Edition^ March, 189S 

Third Edition, September, iSgS 

Fourth Edition, January, J()O0 

Fifth Edition, December, IQOI 

Sixth Impression, j4u£iist, I(j03 

Seventh Impression, February, Jq04 

Eighth ImfressioH, May, igos 

Ninth Impression, April, igo6 

Tenth Impression, November, /907 

Eleventh Impression, January, iQoq 

Twelfth Impression, July, igio 

Thirteenth Impression, February, iqia 

Fourteenth Impression, September, Ji)t3 

Fifteenth Impression, July, JQ16 

Sixteenth Impression, Augtist, iQid 

Seventeenth Impression, May, igij 

Eighteenth Edition, October, igij 

Nineteenth Edition, Auguit, igi9 



f/l 



/ ur- 




TO MY WIFE 

Take, dear, my little sheaf of songs. 

For, old or new. 
All that is good in them belongs 

Only to you ; 

And, singing as when all was young. 

They will recall 
Those others, lived but left unsung — 

The best of all. 



April 1888 

September 1897 



W. E. H. 



ADVERTISEMENT 

My friend and publisher, Mr. Alfred Nutt, asks me to 
introduce this re-issue of old work in a new^shape. At his 
request, then, I have to say that nearly all the numbers 
contained in the present volume are reprinted from 'A Book 
of Verses' (1888) and 'London Voluntaries' (1892-3). From 
the first of these I have removed some copies of verse which 
seemed to me scarce worth keeping; and I have recovered 
for it certain others from those publications which had made 
room for them. I have corrected where I could, added such 
dates as I might, and, by re-arrangement and revision, done 
my best to give my book, such as it is, its final form. If 
any be displeased by the result, I can but submit that my 
verses are my own, and that this is how I would have them 
read. 

The work of revision has reminded me that, small as is 
this book of mine, it is all in the matter of verse that I have 
to show for the years between 1872 and 1897. A principal 
reason is that, after spending the better part of my life in 
the pursuit of poetry, I found myself (about 1877) so utterly 
unmarketable that I had to own myself beaten in art, and 
to addict myself to journalism for the next ten years. Came 
the production by my old friend, Mr. H. B. Donkin, in his 
little collection of 'Voluntaries' (1888), compiled for that 
East-End Hospital to which he has devoted so much time and 
energy and skill, of those unrhyming rhythms in which I had 
tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do in 
rhyme, my impressions of the Old Edinburgh Infirmary. 
They had long since been rejected by every editor of standing 
in London — I had well-nigh said in the world; but as soon as 
Mr. Nutt had read them, he entreated me to look for more. 



viii ADVERTISEMENT 

I did as I was told; old dusty sheaves were dragged to light; 
the work of selection and correction was begun; I burned 
much; I found that, after all, the lyrical instinct had slept — 
not died; I ventured (in brieQ 'A Book of Verses.* It was 
received with so much interest that I took heart once more, 
and wrote the numbers presently reprinted from 'The Na- 
tional Observer' in the collection first (1892) called 'The Song 
of the Sword' and afterwards (1893) 'London Voluntaries.* 
If I have said nothing since, it is that I have nothing to say 
which is not, as yet, too personal — too personal and too 
afflicting — for utterance. 

For the matter of my book, it is there to speak for itself: — 

'Here's a sigh to those who love me 
And a smile to those who hate.' 

I refer to it for the simple pleasure of reflecting that it has 
made me many friends and some enemies. 

W. E. H. 

Muswell Hill 4th September, 1897. 



CONTENTS 

IN HOSPITAL 

PAGE 

I. Enter Patient 3 

II. Waiting 4 

III. Interior 5 

IV. Before 6 

V. Operation 7 

VI. After 9 

VII. Vigil 10 

VIII. StafF-Nurse: Old Style 13 

IX. Lady-Probationer 14 

X. Staff-Nurse: New Style 15 

XI. Clinical 16 

XII. Etching 19 

XIII. Casualty 21 

XIV. Ave, Caesar ! 23 

XV. 'The Chief 24 

XVI. House-Surgeon 25 

XVII. Interlude 26 

XVIII. Children: Private Ward 28 

XIX. Scrubber 29 

ix 



X CONTENTS 



PAGE 



XX. Visitor 30 

XXI. Romance 31 

XXII. Pastoral 33 

XXIII. Music 35 

XXIV. Suicide 37 

XXV. Apparition 39 

XXVI. Anterotics 40 

XXVII. Nocturn 41 

XXVIII. Discharged 42 

Envoy 44 

The Song of the Sword 47 

Arabian Nights' Entertainments • • • • 57 

BRIC-A-BRAC 

Ballade of a Toyokuni Colour-Print 79 

Ballade of Youth and Age 81 

Ballade of Midsummer Days and Nights ... 83 

Ballade of Dead Actors 85 

Ballade Made in the Hot Weather 87 

Ballade of Truisms 89 

Double Ballade of Life and Fate 91 

Double Ballade of the Nothingness of Things . . 94 

At Queensferry 98 



CONTENTS xi 



PAGE 



Orientale 99 

In Fisherrow 100 

Back-View loi 

Croquis ' . . 102 

Attadale West Highlands 103 

From a Window in Princes Street 104 

In the Dials 105 

The gods are dead 106 

Let us be drunk 107 

When you are old 108 

Beside the idle summer sea 109 

The ways of Death are soothing and serene . . .110 

We shall surely die ill 

What is to come 112 

ECHOES 

I. To my Mother 115 

II. Life is bitter 117 

III. O, gather me the rose 118 

IV. Out of the night that covers me . . . .119 
V. I am the Reaper 120 

VI. Praise the generous gods 122 

VII. Fill a glass with golden wine 123 



Xli 



CONTENTS 



VIII. We'll go no more a-roving 

IX. Madam Life's a piece in bloom. 

X. The sea is full of wandering foam . 

XI. Thick is the darkness 

XII. To me at my fifth-floor window 

XIII. Bring her again, O western wind 

XIV. The wan sun westers, faint and slow 
XV. There is a wheel inside my head 

XVI. While the west is paling 

XVII. The sands are alive with sunshine . 

XVIII. The nightingale has a lyre of gold . 

XIX. Your heart has trembled to my tongue 

XX. The surges gushed and sounded 

XXI. We flash across the level . 

XXII. The West a glimmering lake of light 

XXIII. The skies are strown with stars 

XXIV. The full sea rolls and thunders 
XXV. In the year that's come and gone . 

XXVI. In the placid summer midnight 

XXVII. She sauntered by the swinging seas 

XXVIII. Blithe dreams arise to greet us 

XXIX. A child 

XXX. Kate-a-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams . 



CONTENTS 



xm 



PAGE 

XXXI. O, have you blessed, behind the stars . 155 

XXXII. O, Falmouth is a fine town . . . .156 

XXXIII. The ways are green 158 

XXXIV. Life in her creaking shoes .... 160 
XXXV. A late lark twitters from the quiet skies . 161 

XXXVI. I gave my heart to a woman . . . .163 

XXXVII. Or ever the knightly years were gone . . 164 

XXXVIII. On the way to Kew 166 

XXXIX. The Past was goodly once .... 168 

XL. The spring, my dear 169 

XLI. The Spirit of Wine 170 

XLii. A wink from Hesper 172 

XLiii. Friends . . . old friends 173 

XLiv. If it should come to be 175 

XLV. From the brake the Nightingale . . .176 

XLVi. In the waste hour 178 

XLVii. Crosses and troubles 181 

LONDON VOLUNTARIES 

I. Grave 185 

II. Andante con moto 187 

III. Scherzando 192 

IV. Largo e mesto 196 

V. Allegro maestoso 200 



XIV 



CONTENTS 



A SONG OF SPEED 



A Song of Speed 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Prologue 

I. Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade . 

II. We are the Choice of the Will . 

III. A desolate shore 

IV. It came with the threat of a waning moon 
V. Why, my heart, do we love her so ? . 

VI. One with the ruined sunset . 

VII. There's a regret 

VIII. Time and the Earth .... 

IX. *As like the Woman as you can' 

X. Midsummer midnight skies . 

XI. Gulls in an aery morrice 

XII. Some starlit garden grey with dew . 

XIII. Under a stagnant sky .... 

XIV. Fresh from his fastnesses 
XV. You played and sang a snatch of song 

XVI. Space and dread and the dark . 

XVII. Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook . 

xviii. When you wake in your crib 



PAGE 



22s 
227 
229 
232 

235 
236 

237 
239 

241 

243 
24s 
246 
247 
249 

251 

252 

254 
257 



CONTENTS XV 

PAGE 

XIX. O, Time and Change 260 

XX. The shadow of Dawn 261 

XXI. When the wind storms by with a shout . . 262 

xxii. Trees and the menace of night . . . 263 

XXIII. Here they trysted, here they strayed . . 265 

XXIV. Not to the staring Day 267 

XXV. What have I done for you 271 



Epilogue. 



274 



IN HOSPITAL 

1872-1875 



On ne saurait dire a quel point un homme, seul dans son 

lit et malade, devient personnel. — 

Balzac. 



I 

ENTER PATIENT 

The morning mists still haunt the stony street; 
The northern summer air is shrill and cold; 
And lo, the Hospital, grey, quiet, old, 
Where Life and Death like friendly chafferers 

meet. 
Thro' the loud spaciousness and draughty gloom 
A small, strange child — so aged yet so young! — 
Her little arm besplinted and beslung. 
Precedes me gravely to the waiting-room. 
I limp behind, my confidence all gone. 
The grey-haired soldier-porter waves me on, 
And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail: 
A tragic meanness seems so to environ 
These corridors and stairs of stone and iron. 
Cold, naked, clean — half-workhouse and half- 
jail. 



IN HOSPITAL 



II 

WAITING 

A SQUARE, squat room (a cellar on promotion), 
Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight; 
Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware; 
Scissors and lint and apothecary's jars. 

Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from. 
Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted: 
Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach. 
While at their ease two dressers do their 
chores. 

One has a probe — it feels to me a crowbar. 
A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone. 
A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers. 
Life Is (I think) a blunder and a shame. 



INTERIOR 



III 
INTERIOR 

The gaunt brown walls 
Look infinite in their decent meanness. 
There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle, 

The fulsome fire. 

The atmosphere 
Suggests the trail of a ghostly druggist. 
Dressings and lint on the long, lean table — 

Whom are they for? 

The patients yawn. 
Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin. 
A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles. 

It's grim and strange. 

Far footfalls clank. 
The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged. 
My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral . . . 

O, a gruesome world! 



IN HOSPITAL 



IV 

BEFORE 

Behold me waiting — waiting for the knife. 
A little while, and at a leap I storm 
The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, 
The drunken dark, the little death-in-life. 
The gods are good to me: I have no wife. 
No innocent child, to think of as I near 
The fateful minute; nothing ail-too dear 
Unmans me for my bout of passive strife. 
Yet I am tremulous and a trifle sick. 
And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little: 
My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. 
Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready. 
But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: 
You carry Caesar and his fortunes — steady! 



OPERATION 



V 

OPERATION 

You are carried in a basket, 

Like a carcase from the shambles, 

To the theatre, a cockpit 

Where they stretch you on a table. 

Then they bid you close your eyehds. 
And they mask you with a napkin, 
And the anEesthetic reaches 
Hot and subtle through your being. 

And you gasp and reel and shudder 
In a rushing, swaying rapture, 
While the voices at your elbow 
Fade — receding — fainter — farther. 

Lights about you shower and tumble, 
And your blood seems crystallising — 
Edged and vibrant, yet within you 
Racked and hurried back and forward. 



IN HOSPITAL 

Then the lights grow fast and furious, 
And you hear a noise of waters, 
And you wrestle, blind and dizzy, 
In an agony of effort. 

Till a sudden lull accepts you, 

And you sound an utter darkness . . 
And awaken . . . with a struggle . 
On a hushed, attentive audience. 



AFTER 



VI 

AFTER 

Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke, 
So through the anaesthetic shows my life; 
So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife 
With the strong stupor that I heave and choke 
And sicken at, it is so foully sweet. 
Faces look strange from space — and disappear 
Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear — 
And hush as sudden. Then my senses fleet 
All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain 
That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly 
Time and the place glimpse on to me again; 
And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty, 
I wake — relapsing — somewhat faint and fain, 
To an immense, complacent dreamery. 



10 IN HOSPITAL 



VII 

VIGIL 

Lived on one's back, 
In the long hours of repose, 
Life Is a practical nightmare — 
Hideous asleep or awake. 

Shoulders and loins 

Ache I 

Ache, and the mattress, 
Run Into boulders and hummocks^ 
Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes- 
Tumbling, importunate, daft — 
Ramble and roll, and the gas, 
Screwed to its lowermost, 
An inevitable atom of light. 
Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper 
Snores me to hate and despair. 

All the old time 

Surges malignant before me; 



VIGIL II 

Old voices, old kisses, old songs 

Blossom derisive about me; 

While the new days 

Pass me in endless procession: 

A pageant of shadows 

Silently, leeringly wending 

On . . . and still on . . . still on! 

Far in the stillness a cat 

Languishes loudly. A cinder 

Falls, and the shadows 

Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man 
to me 

Turns with a moan; and the snorer. 

The drug like a rope at his throat. 

Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night- 
nurse, 

Noiseless and strange. 

Her bull's eye half-lanterned in apron 

(Whispering me, 'Are ye no sleepin' yet?'), 

Passes, list-slippered and peering. 

Round . . . and is gone. 

Sleep comes at last — 

Sleep full of dreams and misgivings — 



12 IN HOSPITAL 

Broken with brutal and sordid 
Voices and sounds that impose on me, 
Ere I can wake to it, 
The unnatural, intolerable day. 



STAFF-NURSE: OLD STYLE 13 



VIII 

STAFF-NURSE: OLD STYLE 

The greater masters of the commonplace, 
Rembrandt and good Sir Walter — only these 
Could paint her all to you: experienced ease 
And antique liveliness and ponderous grace; 
The sweet old roses of her sunken face; 
The depth and malice of her sly, grey eyes; 
The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, 

defies; 
The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace. 
These thirty years has she been nursing here. 
Some of them under Syme, her hero still. 
Much is she worth, and even more is made of 

her. 
Patients and students hold her very dear. 
The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill. 
They say 'The Chief himself is half-afraid of 

her. 



14 IN HOSPITAL 



IX 

LADY-PROBATIONER 

Some three, or five, or seven, and thirty years; 

A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin; 

Dark eyes and shy that, ignorant of sin. 

Are yet acquainted, it would seem, with tears; 

A comely shape; a slim, high-coloured hand. 

Graced, rather oddly, with a signet ring; 

A bashful air, becoming everything; 

A well-bred silence always at command. 

Her plain print gown, prim cap, and bright steel 

chain 
Look out of place on her, and I remain 
Absorbed in her, as in a pleasant mystery. 
Quick, skilful, quiet, soft in speech and touch . . . 
'Do you like nursing?' 'Yes, Sir, very much.' 
Somehow, I rather think she has a history. 



STAFF-NURSE: NEW STYLE 15 



STAFF-NURSE: NEW STYLE 

Blue-eyed and bright of face but waning fast 

Into the sere of virginal decay, 

I view her as she enters, day by day, 

As a sweet sunset almost overpast. 

Kindly and calm, patrician to the last, 

Superbly falls her gown of sober gray, 

And on her chignon's elegant array 

The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste. 

She talks Beethoven; frowns disapprobation 

At Balzac's name, sighs it at 'poor George 

Sand's' ; 
Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands; 
Speaks Latin with a right accentuation; 
And gives at need (as one who understands) 
Draught, counsel, diagnosis, exhortation. 



i6 IN HOSPITAL 



XI 

CLINICAL 

Hist? . . . 

Through the corridor's echoes, 

Louder and nearer 

Comes a great shuffling of feet. 

Quick, every one of you. 

Straight your quilts, and be decent I 

Here's the Professor. 

In he comes first 

With the bright look we know, 

From the broad, white brows the kind eyes 

Soothing yet nerving you. Here at his elbow, 

White-capped, white-aproned, the Nurse, 

Towel on arm and her inkstand 

Fretful with quills. 

Here in the ruck, anyhow. 



CLINICAL 17 

Surging along, 

Louts, duffers, exquisites, students, and prigs — 
Whiskers and foreheads, scarf-pins and spec- 
tacles — 
Hustles the Class I And they ring themselves 
Round the first bed, where the Chief 
(His dressers and clerks at attention), 
Bends in inspection already. 

So shows the ring 

Seen from behind round a conjurer 

Doing his pitch in the street. 

High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, 

narrow ones, 
Round, square, and angular, serry and shove; 
While from within a voice. 
Gravely and weightily fluent, 
Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly 
(Look at the stress of the shoulders I) 
Out of a quiver of silence, 
Over the hiss of the spray, 
Comes a low cry, and the sound 
Of breath quick intaken through teeth 
Clenched in resolve. And the Master 
Breaks from the crowd, and goes, 



i8 IN HOSPITAL 

Wiping his hands, 

To the next bed, with his pupils 

Flocking and whispering behind him. 

Now one can see. 

Case Number One 

Sits (rather pale) with his bedclothes 

Stripped up, and showing his foot 

(Alas for God's Image!) 

Swaddled in wet, white lint 

Brilliantly hideous with red. 



ETCHING 19 



XII 

ETCHING 

Two and thirty is the ploughman. 
He's a man of gallant inches, 
And his hair is close and curly, 

And his beard; 
But his face is wan and sunken. 
And his eyes are large and brilliant. 
And his shoulder-blades are sharp, 

And his knees. 

He Is weak of wits, religious, 
Full of sentiment and yearning. 
Gentle, faded — with a cough 

And a snore. 
When his wife (who was a widow, 
And is many years his elder) 
Fails to write, and that is always, 

He desponds. 



20 IN HOSPITAL 

Let his melancholy wander, 

And he'll tell you pretty stories 

Of the women that have wooed him 

Long ago; 
Or he'll sing of bonnie lasses 
Keeping sheep among the heather, 
With a crackling, hackling click 

In his voice. 



CASUALTY 21 



XIII 

CASUALTY 

As with varnish red and glistening 

Dripped his hair; his feet looked rigid; 
Raised, he settled stiffly sideways: 
You could see his hurts were spinal. 

He had fallen from an engine, 

And been dragged along the metals. 
It was hopeless, and they knew it; 
So they covered him, and left him. 

As he lay, by fits half sentient, 
Inarticulately moaning, 
With his stockinged soles protruded 
Stark and awkward from the blankets, 

To his bed there came a woman, 

Stood and looked and sighed a little, 
And departed without speaking, 
As himself a few hours after. 



22 IN HOSPITAL 

I was told it was his sweetheart. 
They were on the eve of marriage. 
She was quiet as a statue, 
But her lip was grey and writhen. 



AVE, CAESAR 23 

XIV 

AVE, CAESAR! 

From the winter's grey despair, 
From the summer's golden languor, 
Death, the lover of Life, 
Frees us for ever. 

Inevitable, silent, unseen, 

Everywhere always, 

Shadow by night and as light in the day 

Signs she at last to her chosen; 

And, as she waves them forth, 

Sorrow and Joy 

Lay by their looks and their voices. 

Set down their hopes, and are made 

One in the dim Forever. 

Into the winter's grey delight. 
Into the summer's golden dream, 
Holy and high and impartial. 
Death, the mother of Life, 
Mingles all men for ever. 



24 IN HOSPITAL 



XV 

THE CHIEF 

His brow spreads large and placid, and his eye 

Is deep and bright, with steady looks that still. 

Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfil — 

His face at once benign and proud and shy. 

If envy scout, if ignorance deny, 

His faultless patience, his unyielding will, 

Beautiful gentleness and splendid skill, 

Innumerable gratitudes reply. 

His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties, 

And seems in all his patients to compel 

Such love and faith as failure cannot quell; 

We hold him for another Herakles, 

Battling with custom, prejudice, disease. 

As once the son of Zeus with Death and Hell. 



HOUSE-SURGEON 25 



XVI 

HOUSE-SURGEON 

Exceeding tall, but built so well his height 
Half-disappears in flow of chest and limb; 
Moustache and whisker trooper-like in trim; 
Frank-faced, frank-eyed, frank-hearted; always 

bright 
And always punctual, morning, noon, and night; 
Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn; 
Humorous, and yet without a touch of whim; 
Gentle and amiable, yet full of fight. 
His piety, though fresh and true in strain. 
Has not yet whitewashed up his common mood 
To the dead blank of his particular Schism. 
Sweet, unaggressive, tolerant, most humane, 
Wild artists like his kindly elderhood, 
And cultivate his mild Philistinism. 



26 IN HOSPITAL 



XVII 

INTERLUDE 

O, THE fun, the fun and frolic 

That The Wind that Shakes the Barley 
Scatters through a penny-whistle 
Tickled with artistic fingers! 

Kate the scrubber (forty summers, 

Stout but sportive) treads a measure. 
Grinning, in herself a ballet. 
Fixed as fate upon her audience. 

Stumps are shaking, crutch supported; 
Splinted fingers tap the rhythm; 
And a head all helmed with plasters 
Wags a measured approbation. 

Of their mattress-life oblivious, 

All the patients, brisk and cheerful. 
Are encouraging the dancer. 
And applauding the musician. 



INTERLUDE 27 

Dim the gas-lights in the output 
Of so many ardent smokers, 
Full of shadow lurch the corners, 
And the doctor peeps and passes. 

There are, maybe, some suspicions 
Of an alcoholic presence . . . 
'Tak' a sup of this, my wumman!' . . . 
New Year comes but once a twelvemonth. 



28 IN HOSPITAL 



XVIII 

CHILDREN: PRIVATE WARD 

Here In this dim, dull, double-bedded room, 
I play the father to a brace of boys, 
Ailing but apt for every sort of noise, 
Bedfast but brilliant yet with health and bloom. 
Roden, the Irishman, is 'sieven past,' 
Blue-eyed, snub-nosed, chubby, and fair of face. 
Willie's but six, and seems to like the place, 
A cheerful little collier to the last. 
They eat, and laugh, and sing, and fight, all day; 
All night they sleep like dormice. See them play 
At Operations: — Roden, the Professor, 
Saws, lectures, takes the artery up, and ties; 
Willie, self-chloroformed, with half-shut eyes. 
Holding the limb and moaning — Case and 
Dresser. 



SCRUBBER 29 



XIX 

SCRUBBER 

She's tall and gaunt, and in her hard, sad face 
With flashes of the old fun's animation 
There lowers the fixed and peevish resignation 
Bred of a past where troubles came apace. 
She tells me that her husband, ere he died, 
Saw seven of their children pass away. 
And never knew the little lass at play 
Out on the green, in whom he's deified. 
Her kin dispersed, her friends forgot and gone, 
All simple faith her honest Irish mind. 
Scolding her spoiled young saint, she labours on : 
Telling her dreams, taking her patients' part, 
Trailing her coat sometimes: and you shall find 
No rougher, quainter speech, nor kinder heart. 



30 IN HOSPITAL 



XX 

VISITOR 

Her little face is like a walnut shell 

With wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adorns 

Her withered brows in quaint, straight curls, 

like horns; 
And all about her clings an old, sweet smell. 
Prim is her gown and quakerlike her shawl. 
Well might her bonnets have been born on her. 
Can you conceive a Fairy Godmother 
The subject of a strong religious call? 
In snow or shine, from bed to bed she runs. 
All twinkling smiles and texts and pious tales, 
Her mittened hands, that ever give or pray, 
Bearing a sheaf of tracts, a bag of buns; 
A wee old maid that sweeps the Bridegroom's 

way. 
Strong in a cheerful trust that never fails. 



ROMANCE 31 



XXI 

ROMANCE 

'Talk of pluck!' pursued the Sailor, 
Set at euchre on his elbow, 
'I was on the wharf at Charleston, 
Just ashore from off the runner. 

'It was grey and dirty weather, 
And I heared a drum go rolling, 
Rub-a-dubbing in the distance, 
Awful dour-like and defiant. 

'In and out among the cotton, 

Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors, 
Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows — 
Poor old Dixie's bottom dollar! 

'Some had shoes, but all had rifles, 
Them that wasn't bald was beardless. 
And the drum was rolling Dixie, 
And they stepped to it like men, sir! 



32 IN HOSPITAL 

*Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets, 
On they swung, the drum a-rolling. 
Mum and sour. It looked like fighting, 
And they meant It too, by thunder!' 



PASTORAL 33 



XXII 

PASTORAL 

It's the Spring. 

Earth has conceived, and her bosom, 

Teeming with summer, is glad. 

Vistas of change and adventure, 

Thro' the green land 

The grey roads go beckoning and winding, 

Peopled with wains, and melodious 

With harness-bells jangling: 

Jangling and twangling rough rhythms 

To the slow march of the stately, great horses 

Whistled and shouted along. 

White fleets of cloud, 
Argosies heavy with fruitfulness. 
Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedge- 
rows. 
Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet winds 
Sway the tall poplars. 



34 IN HOSPITAL 

Pageants of colour and fragrance, 
Pass the sweet meadows, and viewless 
Walks the mild spirit of May, 
Visibly blessing the world. 

O, the brilliance of blossoming orchards! 
O, the savour and thrill of the woods, 
When their leafage is stirred 
By the flight of the Angel of Rain! 
Loud lows the steer; in the fallows 
Rooks are alert; and the brooks 
Gurgle and tinkle and trill. Thro' the gloam- 
ings, 
Under the rare, shy stars, 
Boy and girl wander. 
Dreaming in darkness and dew. 

It's the Spring. 

A sprightliness feeble and squalid 
Wakes in the ward, and I sicken. 
Impotent, winter at heart. 



MUSIC 35 



XXIII 

MUSIC 

Down the quiet eve, 
Thro' my window with the sunset 
Pipes to me a distant organ 
Foolish ditties; 

And, as when you change 

Pictures in a magic lantern. 

Books, beds, bottles, floors, and ceiling 

Fade and vanish. 

And I'm well once more. . . . 
August flares adust and torrid. 
But my heart is full of April 
Sap and sweetness. 

In the quiet eve 

I am loitering, longing, dreaming . . . 
Dreaming, and a distant organ 
Pipes me ditties. 



36 IN HOSPITAL 

I can see the shop, 
I can smell the sprinkled pavement, 
Where she serves — her chestnut chignon 
Thrills my senses! 

O, the sight and scent. 
Wistful eve and perfumed pavement I 
In the distance pipes an organ . . . 
The sensation 

Comes to me anew, 
And my spirit for a moment 
Thro' the music breathes the blessed 
Airs of London. 



SUICIDE 37 



XXIV 

SUICIDE 

Staring corpselike at the ceiling, 
See his harsh, unrazored features, 
Ghastly brown against the pillow, 
And his throat — so strangely bandaged I 

Lack of work and lack of victuals, 
A debauch of smuggled whisky, 
And his children in the workhouse 
Made the world so black a riddle 

That he plunged for a solution; 

And, although his knife was edgeless, 

He was sinking fast towards one, 

When they came, and found, and saved him. 

Stupid now with shame and sorrow. 
In the night I hear him sobbing. 
But sometimes he talks a little. 
He has told me all his troubles. 



38 IN HOSPITAL 

In his broad face, tanned and bloodless, 
White and wild his eyeballs glisten; 
And his smile, occult and tragic, 
Yet so slavish, makes you shudder! 



APPARITION 39 



XXV 

APPARITION 

Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, 
Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face — 
Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched 

with race. 
Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, 
The brown eyes radiant with vivacity — 
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, 
A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace 
Of passion and Inpudence and energy. 
Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, 
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, 
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: 
A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, 
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all. 
And something of the Shorter-Catechist. 



4P IN HOSPITAL 



XXVI 

ANTEROTICS 

Laughs the happy April morn 
Thro' my grimy, little window, 
Ajid a shaft of sunshine pushes 
Thro' the shadows in the square. 

Dogs are tracing thro' the grass, 

Crows are cawing round the chimneys, 
In and out among the washing 
Goes the West at hide-and-seek. 

Loud and cheerful clangs the bell. 
Here the nurses troop to breakfast. 
Handsome, ugly, all are women . . . 
O, the Spring — the Spring — the Spring! 



NOCTURN 41 



XXVII 

NOCTURN 

At the barren heart of midnight, 
When the shadow shuts and opens 
As the loud flames pulse and flutter, 
I can hear a cistern leaking. 

Dripping, dropping, In a rhythm. 
Rough, unequal, half-melodious. 
Like the measures aped from nature 
In the infancy of music; 

Like the buzzing of an insect, 
Still, irrational, persistent . . , 
I must listen, listen, listen 
In a passion of attention; 

Till it taps upon my heartstrings, 
And my very life goes dripping. 
Dropping, dripping, drip-drip-droppIng, 
In the drip-drop of the cistern. 



42 IN HOSPITAL 



XXVIII 

DISCHARGED 

Carry me out 

Into the wind and the sunshine, 

Into the beautiful world. 

O, the wonder, the spell of the streets! 
The stature and strength of the horses, 
The rustle and echo of footfalls, 
The flat roar and rattle of wheels! 
A swift tram floats huge on us . . . 
It's a dream? 

The smell of the mud in my nostrils 
Blows brave — like a breath of the sea! 

As of old. 

Ambulant, undulant drapery, 
Vaguely and strangely provocative, 
Flutters and beckons. O, yonder — 
Is it? — the gleam of a stocking! 
Sudden, a spire 



DISCHARGED 43 

Wedged in the mist! O, the houses, 
The long lines of lofty, grey houses, 
Cross-hatched with shadow and light! 
These are the streets. . . . 
Each is an avenue leading 
Whither I will! 

Free ... I 

Dizzy, hysterical, faint, 

I sit, and the carriage rolls on with me 

Into the wonderful world. 

The Old Infirmary, Edinburgh, 1873-75 



44 IN HOSPITAL 



ENVOY 

To Charles Baxter 

Do you remember 

That afternoon — that Sunday afternoon? — 

When, as the kirks were ringing in, 

And the grey city teemed 

With Sabbath feelings and aspects, 

Lewis — our Lewis then, 

Now the whole world's — and you. 

Young, yet in shape most like an elder, came, 

Laden with Balzacs 

(Big, yellow books, quite impudently French), 

The first of many times 

To that transformed back-kitchen where I lay 

So long, so many centuries — 

Or years is it! — ago? 

Dear Charles, since then 
We have been friends, Lewis and you and I, 
(How good it sounds, 'Lewis and you and I!') 
Such friends, I like to think, 



ENVOY 45 

That In us three, Lewis and me and you, 

Is something of that gallant dream 

Which old Dumas — the generous, the humane, 

The seven-and-seventy times to be forgiven! — 

Dreamed for a blessing to the race, 

The immortal Musketeers. 

Our Athos rests — the wise, the kind, 

The liberal and august, his fault atoned, 

Rests in the crowded yard 

There at the west of Princes Street. We three — 

You, I, and Lewis! — still afoot, 

Are still together, and our lives, 

In chime so long, may keep 

(God bless the thought!) 

Un jangled till the end. 

W. E. H. 

Chiswick, March 1888 



THE SONG 
OF THE SWORD 

{To Rudyard Kipling) 
1890 



The Sword 

Singing — 

The voice of the Sword from the heart 

of the Sword 
Clanging imperious 
Forth from Time's battlements 
His ancient and triumphant Song. 

In the beginning, 
Ere God inspired Himself 
Into the clay thing 
Thumbed to His image, 
The vacant, the naked shell 
Soon to be Man: 
Thoughtful He pondered it, 
Prone there and impotent, 
49 



so THE SONG OF THE SWORD 

Fragile, inviting 

Attack and discomfiture; 

Then, with a smile — 

As He heard in the Thunder 

That laughed over Eden 

The Voice of the Trumpet, 

The iron Beneficence, 

Calling his dooms 

To the Winds of the world — 

Stooping, He drew 

On the sand with His finger 

A shape for a sign 

Of his way to the eyes 

That in wonder should waken, 

For a proof of His will 

To the breaking intelligence. 

That was the birth of me : 

I am the Sword. 

Bleak and lean, grey and cruel. 
Short-hiked, long shafted, 
I froze into steel; 
And the blood of my elder, 
His hand on the hafts of me. 
Sprang like a wave 



THE SONG OF THE SWORD 51 

In the wind, as the sense 

Of his strength grew to ecstacy; 

Glowed like a coal 

In the throat of the furnace; 

As he knew me and named me 

The War-Thing, the Comrade, 

Father of honour 

And giver of kingship, 

The fame-smith, the song-master, 

Bringer of women 

On fire at his hands 

For the pride of fulfilment, 

Priest (saith the Lord) 

Of his marriage with victory. 

Ho ! then, the Trumpet, 

Handmaid of heroes. 

Calling the peers 

To the place of espousals! 

Ho ! then, the splendour 

And glare of my ministry. 

Clothing the earth 

With a livery of lightnings! 

Ho ! then, the music 

Of battles in onset, 

And ruining armours. 



52 THE SONG OF THE SWORD 

And God's gift returning 

In fury to Godl 

Thrilling and keen 

As the song of the winter stars 

Ho ! then, the sound 

Of my voice, the implacable 

Angel of Destiny! — 

I am the Sword. 

Heroes, my children, 

Follow, O, follow me! 

Follow, exulting 

In the great light that breaks 

From the sacred Companionship ! 

Thrust through the fatuous. 

Thrust through the fungous brood, 

Spawned in my shadow 

And gross with my gift! 

Thrust through, and hearken, 

O, hark to the Trumpet, 

The Virgin of Battles, 

Calling, still calling you 

Into the Presence, 

Sons of the Judgment, 

Pure wafts of the Will ! 



THE SONG OF THE SWORD 53 

Edged to annihilate, 

Hilted with government, 

Follow, O, follow me, 

Till the waste places 

All the grey globe over 

Ooze, as the honeycomb 

Drips, with the sweetness 

Distilled of my strength, 

And, teeming in peace 

Through the wrath of my coming^ 

They give back in beauty 

The dread and the anguish 

They had of me visitant! 

Follow, O follow, then, 

Heroes, my harvesters ! 

Where the tall grain is ripe 

Thrust In your sickles I 

Stripped and adust 

In a stubble of empire, 

Scything and binding 

The full sheaves of sovranty; 

Thus, O, thus gloriously, 

Shall you fulfil yourselves I 

Thus, O, thus mightily, 

Show yourselves sons of mine — 



54 THE SONG OF THE SWORD 

Yea, and win grace of me: 
I am the Sword! 



I am the feast-maker: 
Hark, through a noise 
Of the screaming of eagles, 
Hark how the Trumpet, 
The mistress of mistresses. 
Calls, silver-throated 
And stern, where the tables 
Are spread, and the meal 
Of the Lord is in hand! 
Driving the darkness. 
Even as the banners 
And spears of the Morning; 
Sifting the nations. 
The slag from the metal, 
The waste and the weak 
From the fit and the strong; 
Fighting the brute. 
The abysmal Fecundity; 
Checking the gross. 
Multitudinous blunders, 
The groping, the purblind 



THE SONG' OF THE SWORD 55 

Excesses in service 
Of the Womb universal, 
The absolute drudge; 
Faring the charactry 
Carved on the World, 
The miraculous gem 
In the seal-ring that burns 
On the hand of the Master — 
Yea! and authority- 
Flames through the dim. 
Unappeasable Grisliness 
Prone down the nethermost 
Chasms of the Void ! — 
Clear singing, clean slicing; 
Sweet spoken, soft finishing; 
Making death beautiful. 
Life but a coin 
To be staked in the pastime 
Whose playing is more 
Than the transfer of being; 
Arch-anarch, chief builder, 
Prince and evangelist, 
I am the Will of God : 
I am the Sword. 



56 THE SONG OF THE SWORD 

The Sword 

Singing — 

The voice of the Sword from the heart 

of the Sword 
Clanging majestical, 
As from the starry-staired 
Courts of the primal Supremacy, 
His high, irresistible song. 



ARABIAN NIGHTS' 

ENTERTAINMENTS 

{To Elizabeth Robins Pennell) 

1893 



'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!' — Fantasio. 

Once on a time 

There was a little boy: a master-mage 

By virtue of a Book 

Of magic — O, so magical it filled 

His life with visionary pomps 

Processional ! And Powers 

Passed with him where he passed. And Thrones 

And Dominations, glalved and plumed and 

mailed, 
Thronged In the criss-cross streets. 
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields. 
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, 

arcades. 
Of the unseen, silent City, In his soul 
Pavilioned jealously, and hid 
As in the dusk, profound. 
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere 

I shut mine eyes. . . . And lo ! 
A flickering snatch of memory that floats 
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five 

59 



6o ARABIAN NIGHTS* 

And thirty dead years deep, 

Antic in girlish broideries 

And skirts and silly shoes with straps 

And a broad-ribalided leghorn, he walks 

Plain in the shadow of a church 

(St. Michael's: in whose brazen call 

To curfew his first wails of wrath were 

whelmed), 
Sedate for all his haste 
To be at home; and, nestled in his arm. 
Inciting still to quiet and solitude. 
Boarded in sober drab, 
With small, square, agitating cuts 
Let in a-top of the double-columned, close. 
Quakerlike print, a Book! . . . 
What but that blessed brief 
Of what is gallantest and best 
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance? 
The Book of rocs. 

Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris. 
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars, 
And ghouls, and genies — O, so huge 
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower 
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post! 
In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman, 



ENTERTAINMENTS 6i 

Schemselnihar and SIndbad, Scheherezade 
The peerless, Bedridden, Badroulbadour, 
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar, 
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk — 
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and 

storms — 
Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles. 
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights! 

Old friends I had a-many — ^kindly and grim 

Familiars, cronies quaint 

And goblin! Never a Wood but housed 

Some morrice of dainty dapperlings. No Brook 

But had his nunnery 

Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites, 

To cabin in his grots, and pace 

His lilied margents. Every lone Hillside 

Might open upon Elf-Land. Every Stalk 

That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed 

Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs 

You climbed beyond the clouds, and found 

The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged 

And drowsy, from his great oak chair. 

Among the flitches and pewters at the fire, 

Called for his Faery Harp. And in it flew, 



62 ARABIAN NIGHTS' 

And, perching on the kitchen table, sang 

Jocund and jubilant, with a sound 

Of those gay, golden-vowelled madrigals 

The shy thrush at mid-May 

Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the 

triumphing dawn; 
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still, 
In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world 

spring, 
For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd, 
And mocked him call for call! 

I could not pass 
The half-door where the cobbler sat in view 
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun, 
In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes. 
Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know 
Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched 
His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists 
And elbows. In the rich June fields. 
Where the ripe clover drew the bees. 
And the tall quakers trembled, and the West 

Wind 
Lolled his half-holiday away 
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own. 



ENTERTAINMENTS 63 

*Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son 

On his white horse along the leafy lanes; 

For at his stirrup linked and ran, 

Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped 

From wall to wall above the espaliers, 

But In the bravest tops 

That market-town, a town of tops, could show: 

Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail 

A banner flaunted in disdain 

Of human stratagems and shifts: 

King over All the Catlands, present and past 

And future, that moustached 

Artificer of fortunes, Puss-in-Boots I 

Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing 

Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood, 

And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases — 

Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part 

A faery chamber hazily seen 

And hazily figured — on dark afternoons 

And windy nights was visiting of the best. 

Then, too, the pelt of hoofs 

Out In the roaring darkness told 

Of Heme the Hunter In his antlered helm 

Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit, 

Between his hell-born Hounds. 



64 ARABIAN NIGHTS' 

And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear, 
Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall, 
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls 
Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the 

pins ; 
For, listening, I could help him play 
His wonderful game. 

In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners 
Refreshed from kegs not coopered In this our 

world. 

But what were these so near, 

So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought 

The run of All Baba's Cave 

Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,' 

With gold to measure, peck by peck, 

In round, brown wooden stoups 

You borrowed at the chandler's? ... Or one time 

Made you Aladdin's friend at school, 

Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp 

In perfect trim? ... Or Ladies, fair 

For all the embrowning scars In their white 

breasts 
Went labouring under some dread ordinance. 



ENTERTAINMENTS 65 

Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the 

while, 
Strange Curs that cried as they, 
Till there was never a Black Bitch of all 
Your consorting but might have gone 
Spell-driven miserably for crimes 
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . . 
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night. 
While you lay wondering and acold. 
Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon 
Queen Labe, abominable and dear. 
Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom, 
Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw 
Like sulphur at the Docks In bulk). 
And muttered certain words you could not hear; 
And there ! a living stream. 
The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and 

flags 
And cresses, glittered and sang 
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness. 
Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom 

floor! . . . 

I was — how many a time ! — 

That Second Calendar, Son of a King, 



66 ARABIAN NIGHTS' 

On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined, 

Pausing at one mysterious door, 

To pry no closer, but content his soul 

With his kind Forty. Yet I could not rest 

For idleness and ungovernable Fate. 

And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame 

(That wonder-working word!) 

Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans. 

And soaring, soaring on 

From air to air, came charging to the ground 

Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds. 

And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I 

sprawled 
Flicked at me with his tail. 
And left me blinded, miserable, distraught 
(Even as I was in deed. 
When doctors came, and odious things were 

done 
On my poor tortured eyes 
With lancets; or some evil acid stung 
And wrung them like hot sand, 
And desperately from room to room 
Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way), 
To get to Bagdad how I might. But there 



ENTERTAINMENTS 67 

I met with Merry Ladles. O you three — 

Safie, Amine, Zobeide — when my heart 

Forgets you all shall be forgot! 

And so we supped, we and the rest, 

On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates, 

Almonds, pistachios, citrons. And Haroun 

Laughed out of his lordly beard 

On Giaffar and Mesrour (/ knew the Three 

For all their Mossoul habits). And outside 

The Tigris, flowing swift 

Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed 

With broken and wavering shapes of stranger 

stars; 
The vast, blue night 
Was murmurous with peris' plumes 
And the leathern wings of genies; words of 

power 
Were whispering; and old fishermen. 
Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to 

shore 
Dead loveliness: or a prodigy In scales 
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold: 
Or copper vessels, stopped with lead. 
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and 

railed. 



68 ARABIAN NIGHTS' 

In durance under potent charactry 

Graven by the seal of Solomon the King. . . . 

Then, as the Book was glassed 

In Life as In some olden mirror's quaint, 

Bewildering angles, so would Life 

Flash light on light back on the Book; and both 

Were changed. Once In a house decayed 

From better days, harbouring an errant show 

(For all Its stories of dry-rot 

Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax, 

Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes), 

I wandered; and no living soul 

Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared 

Upon them staring — staring. Till at last, 

Three sets of rafters from the streets, 

I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room. 

With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene. 

Guarding the door : and there, In a bedroom-set. 

Behind a fence of faded crimson cords, 

With an aspect of frills 

And dimities and dishonoured privacy 

That made you hanker and hesitate to look, 

A Woman with her litter of Babes — all slain. 

All In their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes 



ENTERTAINMENTS 69 

Staring — still staring; so that I turned and ran 

As for my neck, but In the street 

Took breath. The same, it seemed. 

And yet not all the same, I was to find, 

As I went up! For afterwards, 

Whenas I went my round alone — 

All day alone — in long, stern, silent streets. 

Where I might stretch my hand and take 

Whatever I would: still there were Shapes of 

Stone, 
Motionless, lifelike, frightening — for the Wrath 
Had smitten them; but they watched. 
This by her melons and figs, that by his rings 
And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze, 
The Painted Eyes insufferable. 
Now, of those grisly images; and I 
Pursued my best-beloved quest, 
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear. 
So the night fell — with never a lamplighter; 
And through the Palace of the King 
I groped among the echoes, and I felt 
That they were there. 

Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes, 
Hall after hall . . . Till lo ! from far 
A Voice! And in a little while 



70 ARABIAN NIGHTS' 

Two tapers burning! And the Voice, 

Heard In the wondrous Word of God, was — 

whose? 
Whose but Zobeide's, 
The lady of my heart, like me 
A True Believer, and like me 
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the 

pale! . . . 

Or, sailing to the Isles 

Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall 

A black blotch In the sunset; and it grew 

Swiftly . . . and grew. Tearing their beards 

The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship. 

Deep laden with splcerles and pearls, went mad. 

Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's 

hand. 
And, turning broadside on. 
As the most Iron would, was haled and sucked 
Nearer, and nearer yet; 
And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps 
Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now 
That swallowed sea and sky; and then, 
Anchors and nails and bolts 



ENTERTAINMENTS 71 

Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on 

clang, 
A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides 
Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay, 
A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal 
About the waters; and her crew 
Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left 
To drown. All the long night I swam; 
But in the morning, O, the smiling coast 
Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike. 
Skirted with shelving sands ! And a great wave 
Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive. 
So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes. 
And, faring inland, in a desert place 
I stumbled on an iron ring — 
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays: 
When, scenting a trap-door, 
I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade 
Stuck into wood. And then, 
The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs. 
Sunk in the naked rock! The cool, clean vault. 
So neat with niche on niche it might have been 
Our beer-cellar but for the rows 
Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars) 
Full to the wide, squat throats 



72 ARABIAN NIGHTS 

With gold-dust, but a-top 

A layer of plckled-walnut-looklng things 

I knew for olives 1 And far, O, far away, 

The Princess of China languished! Far away 

Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief 

Of Eunuchs and the privilege 

Of going out at night 

To play — unkenned, majestlcal, secure — 

Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped 

Like Tigris shore for shore! Haply a Ghoul 

Sat In the churchyard under a frightened moon, 

A thighbone In his fist, and glared 

At supper with a Lady: she who took 

Her rice with tweezers grain by grain. 

Or you might stumble — there by the iron gates 

Of the Pump Room — underneath the limes — 

Upon Bedreddin In his shirt and drawers, 

Just as the civil Genie laid him down. 

Or those red-curtained panes. 

Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily 

Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes. 

Might turn a caravansery's, wherein 

You found Noureddin AH, loftily drunk. 

And that fair Persian, bathed in tears, 

You'd not have given way 



ENTERTAINMENTS 73 

For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous 

You had that dark and disleaved afternoon 

Escaped on a roc's claw, 

Disguised like SIndbad — ^but In Christmas beef! 

And all the blissful while 

The schoolboy satchel at your hip 

Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze 

Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn 

From over Caspian : yea, the Chief Jewellers 

Of Tartary and the bazaars, 

Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind. ■ 

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart 

The maglan East: thus the child eyes 

Spelled out the wizard message by the light 

Of the sober, workaday hours 

They saw, week In week out, pass, and still pass 

In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind 

In ancient Severn's arm, 

Amongst her water-meadows and her docks, 

Whose floating populace of ships — 

Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantlnes, 

Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters — 

brought 
To her very doorsteps and geraniums 



74 ARABIAN NIGHTS' 

The scents of the World's End; the calls 

That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride 

Like fire on some high errand of the race; 

The Irresistible appeals 

For comradeship that sound 

Steadily from the irresistible sea. 

Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the 

tale, 
Telling Itself anew 
In terms of living, labouring life. 
Took on the colours, busked it In the wear 
Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance, 
The Angel-Playmate, raining down 
His golden Influences 
On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did, 
Walked with me arm in arm. 
Or left me, as one bediademed with straws 
And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart 
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find 
His fiery-hearted presence everywhere. 
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things, 
Sends the same silver dews 
Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies 
On some poor collier-hamlet — (mound on 

mound 



ENTERTAINMENTS 75 

Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk 
Sullenly smoking over a row 
Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air 
A web of rails and wheels and beams; with 

strings 
Of hurtling, tipping trams) — 
As on the amorous nightingales 
And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers 
Of Samarcand — the Ineffable — whence you espy 
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears, 
Like listed lightnings. 

Samarcand! 
That name of names! That star-vaned belvedere 
Builded against the Chambers of the South! 
That out post on the Infinite! 

And behold! 
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild 

tide 
Might overtake you: for one fringe. 
One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one 
Floats founded vague 
In lubberlands delectable — isles of palm 
And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas 
The promise of wistful hills — 
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream. 



BRIC-A-BRAC 

1877-1888 



'The tune of the time.' — Hamlet, concerning Osric. 



BALLADE 

OF A TOYOKUNI COLOUR-PRINT 

To W. A. 

Was I a Samurai renowned, 
Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow? 
A histrlon angular and profound? 
A priest? a porter? — Child, although 
I have forgotten clean, I know 
That in the shade of Fujisan, 
What time the cherry-orchards blow, 
I loved you once in old Japan. 

As here you loiter, flowing-gowned 

And hugely sashed, with pins a-row 

Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, 

Demure, inviting — even so. 

When merry maids in MIyako 

To feel the sweet o' the year began, 

And green gardens to overflow, 

I loved you once in old Japan. 

79 



8o BRIC-A-BRAC 

Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round 
Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow, 
A blue canal the lake's blue bound 
Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo! 
Touched with the sundown's spirit and glow, 
I see you turn, with flirted fan. 
Against the plum-tree's bloomy snow. . . . 
I loved you once in old Japan 1 

Envoy 
Dear, 'twas a dozen lives ago; 
But that I was a lucky man 
The Toyokuni here will show: 
I loved you — once — in old Japan. 



BRIC-A-BRAC 8i 

BALLADE 

(double refrain) 
OF YOUTH AND AGE 

I. M. 

Thomas Edward Brown 
(1829-1896) 
Spring at her height on a morn at prime, 
Sails that laugh from a flying squall, 
Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme — 
Youth Is the sign of them, one and all. 
Winter sunsets and leaves that fall, 
An empty flagon, a folded page, 
A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball — 
These are a type of the world of Age. 

Bells that clash in a gaudy chime. 

Swords that clatter In onsets tall. 

The words that ring and the fames that climb — 

Youth is the sign of them, one and all. 

Hymnals old in a dusty stall, 

A bald, blind bird in a crazy cage, 

The scene of a faded festival — 

These are a type of the world of Age. 



82 BRIC-A-BRAC 

Hours that strut as the heirs of time, 
Deeds whose rumour's a clarion-call, 
Songs where the singers their souls sublime- 
Youth is the sign of them, one and all. 
A staff that rests in a nook of wall, 
A reeling battle, a rusted gage. 
The chant of a nearing funeral — > 
These are a type of the world of Age. 

Envoy 
Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl — 
Youth is the sign of them, one and all. 
A smouldering hearth and a silent stage — 
These are a type of the world of Age. 



BRIC-A-BRAC 83 



BALLADE 

(double refrain) 

OF MIDSUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS 

To W. H. 

With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams 
The full world rolls In a rhythm of praise, 
And the winds are one with the clouds and 

beams — 
Midsummer days ! Midsummer days ! 
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze, 
While the West from a rapture of sunset rights. 
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise — 
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! 

The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams, 
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways. 
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams — 
Midsummer days! Midsummer days! 
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways. 
All secret shadows and mystic lights, 
Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze — 
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! 



84 BRIC-A-BRAC 

There's a music of bells from the trampling 

teams, 
Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze. 
The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams — 
Midsummer days! Midsummer days! 
A soul from the honeysuckle strays. 
And the nightingale as from prophet heights 
Sings to the Earth of her million Mays — 
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! 

Envoy 
And it's O, for my dear and the charm that 

stays — 
Midsummer days! Midsummer days! 
It's O, for my Love and the dark that plights — 
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! 



BRIC-A-BRAC 8s 

BALLADE 

OF DEAD ACTORS 

I. M. 

Edward John Henley 
(1861-1898) 

iWhere are the passions they essayed, 
And where the tears they made to flow? 
Where the wild humours they portrayed 
For laughing worlds to see and know? 
Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? 
Sir Peter's whims and TImon's gall? 
And Millamant and Romeo? 
Into the night go one and all. 

Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed? 
The plumes, the armours — friend and foe? 
The cloth of gold, the rare brocade. 
The mantles glittering to and fro? 
The pomp, the pride, the royal show? 
The cries of war and festival? 
The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? 
Into the night go one and all. 



86 BRIC-A-BRAC 

The curtain falls, the play is played: 
The Beggar packs beside the Beau; 
The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; 
The Thunder huddles with the Snow. 
Where are the revellers high and low? 
The clashing swords? The lover's call? 
The dancers gleaming row on row? 
Into the night go one and all. 

Envoy 
Prince, in one common overthrow 
The Hero tumbles with the Thrall: 
As dust that drives, as straws that blow, 
Into the night go one and all. 



BRIC-A-BRAC 87 



BALLADE 

MADE IN THE HOT WEATHER 

To C. M. 

Fountains that frisk and sprinkle 

The moss they overspill; 

Pools that the breezes crinkle; 

The wheel beside the mill, 

With its wet, weedy frill; 

Wind-shadows in the wheat; 

A water-cart in the street; 

The fringe of foam that girds 

An islet's ferneries; 

A green sky's minor thirds — 

To live, I think of these! 

Of ice and glass the tinkle, 
Pellucid, silver-shrill ; 
Peaches without a wrinkle; 
Cherries and snow at will. 
From china bowls that fill 
The senses with a sweet 



88 BRIC-A-BRAC 

Incuriousness of heat; 
A melon's dripping sherd's; 
Cream-clotted strawberries; 
Dusk dairies set with curds — 
To live, I think of these ! 

Vale-lily and periwinkle; 

Wet stone-crop on the sill; 

The look of leaves a-twinkle 

With windlets clear and still; 

The feel of a forest rill 

That wimples fresh and fleet 

About one's naked feet; 

The muzzles of drinking herds; 

Lush flags and bulrushes; 

The chirp of rain-bound birds — 

To live, I think of these ! 

Envoy 
Dark aisles, new packs of cards, 
Mermaidens' tails, codI swards, 
Dawn dews and starlit seas. 
White marbles, whiter words — 
To live, I think of these ! 



BRIC-A-BRAC 89 



BALLADE OF TRUISMS 

Gold or silver, every day, 

Dies to gray. 
There are knots in every skein. 
Hours of work and hours of play 

Fade away 
Into one immense Inane. 
Shadow and substance, chaff and grain, 

Are as vain 
As the foam or as the spray. 
Life goes crooning, faint and fain. 

One refrain: — 
'If it could be always May!' 

Though the earth be green and gay, 
Though, they say, 

Man the cup of heaven may drain; 

Though, his little world to sway, 
He display 

Hoard on hoard of pith and brain: 

Autumn brings a mist and rain 
That constrain 



90 BRIC-A-BRAC 

Him and his to know decay, 

Where undimmed the lights that wane 

Would remain, 
If it could be always May. 

Yea, alas, must turn to Nay, 

Flesh to clay. 
Chance and Time are ever twain. 
Men may scoff, and men may pray, 

But they pay 
Every pleasure with a pain. 
Life may soar, and Fortune deign 

To explain 
Where her prizes hide and stray; 
But we lack the lusty train 

We should gain. 
If It could be always May. 

Envoy 
Time, the pedagogue, his cane 
Might retain, 
But his charges all would stray 
Truanting in every lane — 

Jack with Jane — 
If it could be always May. 



BRIC-A-BRAC 91 



DOUBLE BALLADE 

OF LIFE AND FATE 

Fools may pine, and sots may swill, 
Cynics gibe, and prophets rail, 
Moralists may scourge and drill, 
Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail. 
Let them whine, or threat, or wail! 
Till the touch of Circumstance 
Down to darkness sink, the scale, 
Fate's a fiddler. Life's a dance. 

What if skies be wan and chill? 
What if winds be harsh and stale? 
Presently the east will thrill, 
And the sad and shrunken sail 
Bellying with a kindly gale. 
Bear you sunwards, while your chance 
Sends you back the hopeful hail: — 
'Fate's a fiddler. Life's a dance.' 



92 BRIC-A-BRAC 

Idle shot or coming bill 
Hapless love or broken bail, 
Gulp it (never chew your pill!), 
And, if Burgundy should fail. 
Try the humbler pot of ale ! 
Over all is heaven's expanse. 
Gold's to find among the shale. 
Fate's a fiddler. Life's a dance. 



Dull Sir Joskin sleeps his fill. 
Good Sir Galahad seeks the Grail, 
Proud Sir Pertinax flaunts his frill, 
Hard Sir -^ger dints his mail; 
And the while by hill and dale 
Tristram's braveries gleam and glance, 
And his blithe horn tells its tale : — 
'Fate's a fiddler. Life's a dance.' 

Araminta's grand and shrill, 
Delia's passionate and frail, 
Doris drives an earnest quill, 
Athanasia takes the veil: 
Wiser Phyllis o'er her pail. 
At the heart of all romance 



BRIC-A-BRAC 93 

Reading, sings to Strephon's flail: — 
'Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance.' 

Every Jack must have his Jill 
(Even Johnson had his Thrale!) : 
Forward, couples — with a will! 
This, the world, is not a jail. 
Hear the music, sprat and whale! 
Hands across, retire, advance ! 
Though the doomsman's on your trail. 
Fate's a fiddler. Life's a dance. 

Envoy 
Boys and girls, at slug and snail 
And their kindred look askance. 
Pay your footing on the nail: 
Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance. 



94 BRIC-A-BRAC 



DOUBLE BALLADE 
OF THE NOTHINGNESS OF THINGS 

The big teetotum twirls, 
And epochs wax and wane 
As chance subsides or swirls; 
But of the loss and gain 
The sum is always plain. 
Read on the mighty pall, 
The weed of funeral 
That covers praise and blame, 
The -isms and the -anities, 
Magnificence and shame : — 
'O Vanity of Vanities!' 

The Fates are subtile girls! 
They give us chaff for grain. 
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls. 
Like bolted death, disdain 
At all that heart and brain 
Conceive, or great or small, 



BRIC-A-BRAC 95 

Upon this earthly ball. 
Would you be knight and dame? 
Or woo the sweet humanities? 
Or illustrate a name? 
O Vanity of Vanities! 

We sound the sea for pearls, 
Or drown them in a drain; 
We flute it with the merles, 
Or tug and sweat and strain; 
We grovel, or we reign; 
We saunter, or we brawl; 
We answer, or we call; 
We search the stars for Fame, 
Or sink her subterranities; 
The legend's still the same: — 
'O Vanity of Vanities!' 

Here at the wine one birls, 
There some one clanks a chain. 
The flag that this man furls 
That man to float is fain. 
Pleasure gives place to pain 
These in the kennel crawl. 



96 BRIC-A-BRAC 

While others take the wall. 
She has a glorious aim, 
He lives for the inanities. 
What comes of every claim? 
O Vanity of Vanities! 



Alike are clods and earls. 
For sot, and seer, and swain, 
For emperors and for churls, 
For antidote and bane, 
There is but one refrain: 
But one for king and thrall, 
For David and for Saul, 
For fleet of foot and lame, 
For pieties and profanities, 
The picture and the frame: — 
'O Vanity of Vanities!' 

Life is a smoke that curls — 

Curls in a flickering skein, 

That winds and whisks and whirls 

A figment thin and vain, 

Into the vast Inane. 

One end for hut and hall! 



BRIC-A-BRAC 97 

One end for cell and stall! 
Burned in one common flame 
Are wisdoms and insanities. 
For this alone we came : — 
'O Vanity of Vanities!' 

Envoy 
Prince, pride must have a fall. 
What is the worth of all 
Your state's supreme urbanities? 
Bad at the best's the game. 
Well might the Sage exclaim: — 
*0 Vanity of Vanities!' 



98 BRIC-A-BRAC 



AT QUEENSFERRY 
To W. G. S. 

The blackbird sang, the skies were clear and 

clean 
We bowled along a road that curved a spine 
Superbly sinuous and serpentine 
Thro' silent symphonies of summer green. 
Sudden the Forth came on us — sad of mien, 
No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line : 
A sheet of dark, dull glass, without a sign 
Of life or death, two spits of sand between. 
Water and sky merged blank in mist together, 
The Fort loomed spectral, and the Guardship's 

spars 
Traced vague, black shadows on the shimmery 

glaze : 
We felt the dim, strange years, the grey, strange 

weather, 
The still, strange land, unvexed of sun or stars, 
Where Lancelot rides clanking thro' the haze. 



BRIC-A-BRAC 99 



ORIENTALE 

She's an enchanting little Israelite, 

A world of hidden dimples ! — Dusky-eyed, 

A starry-glancing daughter of the Bride, 

With hair escaped from some Arabian Night, 

Her lip is red, her cheek is golden-white, 

Her nose a scimitar; and, set aside 

The bamboo hat she cocks with so much pride, 

Her dress a dream of daintiness and delight. 

And when she passes with the dreadful boys 

And romping girls, the cockneys loud and crude, 

My thought, to the Minories tied yet moved to 

range 
The Land o' the Sun, commingles with the noise 
Of magian drums and scents of sandalwood 
A touch Sidonian — modern — taking — strange ! 



loo BRIC-A-BRAC 



IN FISHERROW 

A HARD north-easter fifty winters long 

Has bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and 

neck; 
Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck; 
Her foot is vast, her bowed leg spare and strong. 
A wide blue coat, a squat and sturdy throng 
Of curt blue coats, a mutch without a speck, 
A white vest broidered black, her person deck. 
Nor seems their picked, stern, old-world quaint- 

ness wrong. 
Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh, 
Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown 

fingers 
The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye. 
Ever and anon imploring you to buy. 
As looking down the street she onward lingers, 
Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry. • 



BRIC-A-BRAC loi 



BACK-VIEW 

To D. F. 

I WATCHED you saunter down the sand: 
Serene and large, the golden weather 
Flowed radiant round your peacock feather, 
And glistered from your jewelled hand. 
Your tawny hair, turned strand on strand 
And bound with blue ribands together, 
Streaked the rough tartan, green like heather. 
That round your lissome shoulder spanned. 
Your grace was quick my sense to seize : 
The quaint looped hat, the twisted tresses, 
The close-drawn scarf, and under these 
The flowing, flapping draperies — 
My thought an outline still caresses. 
Enchanting, comic, Japanese! 



I02 BRIC-A-BRAC 



CROQUIS 

To G. W. 

The beach was crowded. Pausing now and then, 

He groped and fiddled doggedly along, 

His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng 

The stony peevishness of sightless men. 

He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again, 

Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song. 

So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and 

wrong. 
You hardly could distinguish one in ten. 
He stopped at last, and sat him on the sand. 
And, grasping wearily his bread-winner, 
Stared dim towards the blue immensity. 
Then leaned his head upon his poor old hand. 
He may have slept: he did not speak nor stir: 
His gesture spoke a vast despondency. 



BRIC-A-BRAC 103 



ATTADALE WEST HIGHLANDS 

To A. J. 

A BLACK and glassy float, opaque and still, 
The loch, at furthest ebb supine in sleep, 
Reversing, mirrored in its luminous deep 
The calm grey skies; the solemn spurs of hill; 
Heather, and corn, and wisps of loitering haze; 
The wee white cots, black-hatted, plumed with 

smoke ; 
The braes beyond — and when the ripple awoke. 
They wavered with the jarred and wavering 

glaze. 
The air was hushed and dreamy. Evermore 
A noise of running water whispered near. 
A straggling crow called high and thin. A bird 
Trilled from the birch-leaves. Round the 

shingled shore, 
Yellow with weed, there wandered, vague and 

clear. 
Strange vowels, mysterious gutturals, Idly heard. 



104 BRIC-A-BRAC 



FROM A WINDOW IN PRINCES STREET 

To M. M. M'B. 

Above the Crags that fade and gloom 
Starts the bare knee of Arthur's Seat; 
Ridged high against the evening bloom, 
The Old Town rises, street on street; 
With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead, 
Like rampired walls the houses lean, 
All spired and domed and turreted. 
Sheer to the valley's darkling green; 
Ranged in mysterious disarray, 
The Castle, menacing and austere. 
Looms through the lingering last of day; 
And in the silver dusk you hear. 
Reverberated from crag and scar, 
Bold bugles blowing points of war. 



BRIC-A-BRAC los 



IN THE DIALS 

To Garryowen upon an organ ground 
Two girls are jigging. Riotously they trip, 
With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip, 
As in the tumult of a witches' round. 
Youngsters and youngsters round them prance 

and bound. 
Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip. 
The artist's teeth gleam from his bearded lip. 
High from the kennel howls a tortured hound. 
The music reels and hurtles, and the night 
Is full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-light 
Flares from a barrow; battered and obtused 
With vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags 
Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hags 
Look on dispassionate — critical — something 

'mused. 



io6 BRIC-A-BRAC 



The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who 

knows? 
Living at least in Lempriere undeleted, 
The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose. 
Are one and all, I like to think, retreated 
In some still land of lilacs and the rose. 

Once high they sat, and high o'er earthly shows 
With sacrificial dance and song were greeted. 
Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes, 

The gods are dead. 

It must be true. The world, a world of prose, 
Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and 

sheeted, 
Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze! 
Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows 
Who will may hear the sorry words repeated : — 

'The Gods are Dead!' 



BRIC-A-BRAC 107 



To F. W. 

Let us be drunk, and for a while forget, 
Forget, and ceasing even from regret, 
Live without reason and despite of rhyme, 
As in a dream preposterous and sublime, 
Where place and hour and means for once are 
met. 

Where is the use of effort? Love and debt 
And disappointment have us in a net. 
Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . , . 
Let us be drunk. 

In vain our little hour we strut and fret. 
And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet: 
We cannot please the tragicaster Time. 
To gain the crystal sphere, the silver clime. 
Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet, 
Let us be drunk! 



io8 BRIC-A-BRAC 



When you are old, and I am passed away — 
Passed, and your face, your golden face, is 

gray— 
I think, whate'er the end, this dream of mine. 
Comforting you, a friendly star will shine 
Down the dim slope where still you stumble and 

stray. 
So may it be : that so dead Yesterday, 
No sad-eyed ghost but generous and gay, 
May serve you memories like almighty wine, 
When you are old! 

Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway 

Of death the past's enormous disarray 

Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come 

no sign. 
Live on well pleased: immortal and divine 
Love shall still tend you, as God's angels may. 
When you are old. 



BRIC-A-BRAC 109 



Beside the idle summer sea 
And in the vacant summer days, 
Light Love came fluting down the ways, 
Where you were loitering with me. 

Who has not welcomed, even as we. 
That jocund minstrel and his lays 
Beside the idle summer sea 
And in the vacant summer days? 

We listened, we were fancy-free; 
And lo ! in terror and amaze 
We stood alone — alone at gaze 
With an implacable memory 
Beside the idle summer sea. 



no BRIC-A-BRAC 



I. M. 
R. G. C. B. 

1878 

The ways of Death are soothing and serene, 
And all the words of Death are grave and sweet. 
From camp and church, the fireside and the 

street. 
She beckons forth — and strife and song have 

been. 

A summer night descending cool and green 
And dark on daytime's dust and stress and heat. 
The ways of Death are soothing and serene, 
And all the words of Death are grave and sweet. 

O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien 
And radiant faces look upon, and greet 
This last of all your lovers, and to meet 
Her kiss, the Comforter's, your spirit lean. . . . 
The ways of Death are soothing and serene. 



BRIC-A-BRAC III 



We shall surely die: 
Must we needs grow old? 
Grow old and cold, 
And we know not why? 

O, the By-and-Bye, 
And the tale that's toldl 
We shall surely die: 
Must we needs grow old? 

Grow old and sigh, 
Grudge and withhold, 
Resent and scold? . . , 
Not you and I? 
We shall surely diel 



112 BRIC-A-BRAC 



What is to come we know not. But we know 
That what has been was good — was good to 

show, 
Better to hide, and best of all to bear. 
We are the masters of the days that were: 
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered 

. . . even. so. 

Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow? 
Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe — 
Dear, though it spoil and break us ! — need we 
care 

What is to come? 

Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, 
Or the gold weather round us mellow slow: 
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare 
And we can conquer, though we may not share 
In the rich quiet of the afterglow 

What is to come. 



ECHOES 

1872-1889 



Aqui estd encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcias. 

Gil Blas AU LECTEUR. 



TO MY MOTHER 

Chiming a dream by the way 

With ocean's rapture and roar, 
I met a maiden to-day 

Walking alone on the shore: 
Walking in maiden wise, 

Modest and kind and fair, 
The freshness of spring in her eyes 

And the fulness of spring in her hair. 

Cloud-shadow and scudding sun-burst 

Were swift on the floor of the sea, 
And a mad wind was romping its worst, 

But what was their magic to me? 
Or the charm of the midsummer skies? 

I only saw she was there, 
A dream of the sea in her eyes 

And the kiss of the sea in her hair. 
"S 



ii6 ECHOES 

I watched her vanish In space; 

She came where I walked no more; 
But something had passed of her grace 

To the spell of the wave and the shore; 
And now, as the glad stars rise, 

She comes to me, rosy and rare. 
The delight of the wind In her eyes 

And the hand of the wind In her hair. 

1872 



ECHOES 117 



II 

Life is bitter. All the faces of the years, 
Young and old, are gray with travail and with 
tears. 
Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep? 
In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers, 
Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours . . 
Let me sleep. 

Riches won but mock the old, unable years; 
Fame's a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears; 
Love must wither, or must live alone and weep. 
In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the 

flowers. 
While we slumber, death approaches through 
the hours . . . 

Let me sleep. 

1872 



ii8 ECHOES 



III 

O, GATHER me the rose, the rose, 

While yet in flower we find it, 
For summer smiles, but summer goes. 

And winter waits behind it! 

For with the dream foregone, foregone, 

The deed forborne for ever, 
The worm, regret, will canker on, 

And Time will turn him never. 

So well It were to love, my love, 

And cheat of any laughter 
The fate beneath us and above. 

The dark before and after. 

The myrtle and the rose, the rose. 

The sunshine and the swallow. 

The dream that comes, the wish that goes, 

The memories that follow! 

1874 



ECHOES 119 

IV 

I. M. 

R. T. HAMILTON BRUCE 

(1846-1899) 

Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Under the bludgeonlngs of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate. 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 
I am the master of my fate: 

I am the captain of my soul. 

1875 



I20 ECHOES 



V 

I AM the Reaper. 

All things with heedful hook 

Silent I gather. 

Pale roses touched with the spring, 

Tall corn in summer, 

Fruits rich with autumn, and frail winter 

blossoms — 
Reaping, still reaping — 
All things with heedful hook 
Timely I gather. 

I am the Sower. 
All the unbodied life 
Runs through my seed-sheet. 
Atom with atom wed. 
Each quickening the other, 
Fall through my hands, ever changing, 
still changeless 



ECHOES 121 

Ceaselessly sowing, 
Life, incorruptible life, 
Flows from my seed-sheet. 

Maker and breaker, 

I am the ebb and the flood, 

Here and Hereafter, 

Sped through the tangle and coil 

Of infinite nature, 

Viewless and soundless I fashion all being. 

Taker and giver, 

I am the womb and the grave, 

The Now and the Ever. 

1875 



122 ECHOES 



VI 

Praise the generous gods for giving 
In a world of wrath and strife, 

With a little time for living, 
Unto all the joy of life. 

At whatever source we drink it, 

Art or love or faith or wine, 
In whatever terms we think it. 

It is common and divine. 

Praise the high gods, for in giving 

This to man, and this alone. 
They have made his chance of living 

Shine the equal of their own. 

1875 



ECHOES 123 



VII 

Fill a glass with golden wine, 

And the while your lips are wet 
Set their perfume unto mine, 

And forget, 
Every kiss we take and give 
Leaves us less of life to live. 

Yet again! Your whim and mine 
In a happy while have met. 
All your sweets to me resign. 

Nor regret 
That we press with every breath. 
Sighed or singing, nearer death. 



1875 



124 ECHOES 



VIII 

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the 

moon. 
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of 

June. 
The summer flowers are faded, the summer 

thoughts are sere. 
We'll go no more a-rovIng, lest worse befall, my 

dear. 

We'll go no more a-rovIng by the light of the 

moon. 
The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs 

the tune. 
Glad ways and words remembered would shame 

the wretched year. 
We'll go no more a-rovIng, nor dream we did, 

my dear. 



ECHOES I2S 

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the 

moon. 
If yet we walk together, we need not shun the 

noon. 
No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left 

to fear, 
We'll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, 

my dear. 

1875 



126 ECHOES 



IX 

To W. R. 

Madam Life's a piece in bloom 
Death goes dogging everywhere: 

She's the tenant of the room, 
He's the ruffian on the stair. 

You shall see her as a friend, 

You shall bilk him once and twice; 

But he'll trap you in the end, 

And he'll stick you for her price. 

With his kneebones at your chest. 
And his knuckles In your throat, 

You would reason — plead — protest! 
Clutching at her petticoat; 

But she's heard it all before, 

Well she knows you've had your fun. 
Gingerly she gains the door, 

And your little job is done. 

1877 



ECHOES 127 



The sea Is full of wandering foam, 

The sky of driving cloud; 
My restless thoughts among them roam . . . 

The night is dark and loud. 

Where are the hours that came to me 

So beautiful and bright? 
A wild wind shakes the wilder sea . . . 

O, dark and loud's the night! 

1876 



128 ECHOES 



XI 

To W. R. 

Thick is the darkness — 
Sunward, O, sunward! 

Rough is the highway — 
Onward, still onward! 

Dawn harbours surely 
East of the shadows. 

Facing us somewhere 

Spread the sweet meadows. 

Upward and forward! 

Time will restore us: 
Light is above us, 

Rest is before us. 



1876 



ECHOES 129 



XII 

To me at my fifth-floor window 
The chimney-pots in rows 

Are sets of pipes pandean 
For every wind that blows; 

And the smoke that whirls and eddies 
In a thousand times and keys 

Is really a visible music 
Set to my reveries. 

O monstrous pipes, melodious 
With fitful tune and dream, 

The clouds are your only audience. 
Her thought is your only theme! 



1875 



I30 ECHOES 



XIII 

Bring her again, O western wind, 

Over the western sea : 
Gentle and good and fair and kind, 

Bring her again to me! 

Not that her fancy holds me dear, 
Not that a hope may be : 

Only that I may know her near. 
Wind of the western sea. 



1875 



ECHOES 131 



XIV 

The wan sun westers, faint and slow; 
The eastern distance glimmers gray; 
An eerie haze comes creeping low 
Across the little, lonely bay; 
And from the sky-line far away 
About the quiet heaven are spread 
Mysterious hints of dying day, 
Thin, delicate dreams of green and red. 

And weak, reluctant surges lap 

And rustle round and down the strand. 

No other sound ... If It should hap. 

The ship that sails from fairy-land! 

The silken shrouds with spells are manned, 

The hull Is magically scrolled. 

The squat mast lives, and In the sand 

The gold prow-griffin claws a hold. 



132 ECHOES 

It steals to seaward silently; 
Strange fish-folk follow thro' the gloom; 
Great wings flap overhead; I see 
The Castle of the Drowsy Doom 
Vague thro' the changeless twilight loom, 
Enchanted, hushed. And ever there 
She slumbers In eternal bloom. 
Her cushions hid with golden hair. 

1875 



ECHOES 133 



XV 

There is a wheel inside my head 

Of wantonness and wine, 

An old, cracked fiddle Is begging without, 
But the wind with scents of the sea is fed. 

And the sun seems glad to shine. 

The sun and the wind are akin to you, 
As you are akin to June. 

But the fiddle ! ... It giggles and twitters 
about. 
And, love and laughter! who gave him the 
cue? — 
He's playing your favourite tune. 

1875 



134 ECHOES 



XVI 

While the west is paling 

Starshine is begun. 
While the dusk is failing 

Glimmers up the sun. 

So, till darkness cover 
Life's retreating gleam, 

Lover follows lover, 

Dream succeeds to dream. 

Stoop to my endeavour, 

O my love, and be 
Only and for ever 

Sun and stars to me. 



1876 



ECHOES 135 



XVII 

The sands are alive with sunshine, 

The bathers lounge and throng, 
And out in the bay a bugle 

Is lilting a gallant song. 

The clouds go racing eastward, 

The blithe wind cannot rest, 
And a shard on the shingle flashes 

Like the shining soul of a jest; 

While children romp in the surges, 

And sweethearts wander free, 
And the Firth as with laughter dimples . . . 

I would it were deep over me! 

1875 



136 ECHOES 



XVIII 

To A. D. 

The nightingale has a lyre of gold, 

The lark's is a clarion call, 
And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, 

But I love him best of all. 

For his song is all of the joy of life. 
And we in the mad, spring weather, 

We two have listened till he sang 
Our hearts and lips together. 

1876 



ECHOES 137 



XIX 

Your heart has trembled to my tongue, 

Your hands in mine have lain, 
Your thought to me has leaned and clung, 
Again and yet again, 

My dear, 
Again and yet again. 

Now die the dream, or come the wife, 

The past is not in vain. 
For wholly as it was your life 
Can never be again, 

My dear. 
Can never be again. 

1876 



138 ECHOES 



XX 

The surges gushed and sounded, 
The blue was the blue of June, 

And low above the brightening east 
Floated a shred of moon. 

The woods were black and solemn, 
The night winds large and free. 

And in your thought a blessing seemed 
To fall on land and sea. 



1877 



ECHOES 139 



XXI 

We flash across the level. 

We thunder thro' the bridges. 
We bicker down the cuttings. 

We sway along the ridges. 

A rush of streaming hedges, 
Of jostling lights and shadows, 

Of hurtling, hurrying stations, 
Of racing woods and meadows. 

We charge the tunnels headlong — 
The blackness roars and shatters. 

We crash between embankments — 
The open spins and scatters. 

We shake off the miles like water. 
We might carry a royal ransom; 

And I think of her waiting, waiting. 
And long for a common hansom. 

1876 



I40 ECHOES 



XXII 

The West a glimmering lake of light, 

A dream of pearly weather, 
The first of stars is burning white — 

The stars we watch together. 
Is April dead? The unresting year 

Will shape us our September, 
And April's work is done, my dear — 

Do you not remember? 

O gracious eve! O happy star, 

Still-flashing, glowing, sinking ! — 
Who lives of lovers near or far 

So glad as I in thinking? 
The gallant world is warm and green, 

For May fulfils November. 
When lights and leaves and loves have been 

Sweet, will you remember? 



ECHOES 141 

O star benignant and serene, 

I take the good to-morrow, 
That fills from verge to verge my dream, 

With all its joy and sorrow! 
The old, sweet spell is unforgot 

That turns to June December; 
And, tho' the world remembered not. 

Love, we would remember. 

1876 



142 ECHOES 



XXIII 

The skies are strown with stars, 

The streets are fresh with dew, 
A thin moon drifts to westward, 
The night is hushed and cheerful. 
My thought is quick with you. 

Near windows gleam and laugh, 

And far away a train 
Clanks glowing through the stillness: 
A great content's in all things, 

And life is not in vain. 

1877 



ECHOES 143 



XXIV 

The full sea rolls and thunders 

In glory and in glee. 
O, bury me not in the senseless earth 

But in the living sea ! 

Ay, bury me where it surges 
A thousand miles from shore, 

And in its brotherly unrest 
I'll range for evermore. 



1876 



144 ECHOES 



XXV 

In the year that's come and gone, love, his flying 

feather 
Stooping slowly, gave us heart, and bade us walk 

together. 
In the year that's coming on, though many a 

troth be broken. 
We at least will not forget aught that love hath 

spoken. 

In the year that's come and gone, dear, we wove 

a tether 
All of gracious words and thoughts binding two 

together. 
In the year that's coming on with Its wealth of 

roses 
We shall weave it stronger yet, ere the circle 

closes. 



ECHOES 145 

In the year that's come and gone, in the golden 
weather, 

Sweet, my sweet, we swore to keep the watch of 
life together. 

In the year that's coming on, rich in joy and 
sorrow. 

We shall light our lamp, and wait life's mys- 
terious morrow. 

1877 



146 ECHOES 



XXVI 

In the placid summer midnight, 

Under the drowsy sky, 
I seem to hear in the stillness 

The moths go glimmering by. 

One by one from the windows 
The lights have all been sped. 

Never a blind looks conscious — 
The street is asleep in bed! 

But I come where a living casement 
Laughs luminous and wide; 

I hear the song of a piano 
Break in a sparkling tide; 

And I feel, in the waltz that frolics 
And warbles swift and clear, 

A sudden sense of shelter 

And friendliness and cheer . . . 



ECHOES 147 

A sense of tinkling glasses, 

Of love and laughter and light — 

The piano stops, and the window 
Stares blank out Into the night. 

The blind goes out, and I wander 

To the old, unfriendly sea. 
The lonelier for the memory 

That walks like a ghost with me. 



148 ECHOES 



XXVII 

She sauntered by the swinging seas, 

A jewel glittered at her ear, 
And, teasing her along, the breeze 

Brought many a rounded grace more near. 

So passing, one with wave and beam, 

She left for memory to caress 
A laughing thought, a golden gleam, 

A hint of hidden loveliness. 

1876 



ECHOES 149 



XXVIII 

To S. C. 

Blithe dreams arise to greet us, 

And life feels clean and new, 
For the old love comes to meet us 

In the dawning and the dew. 
O'erblown with sunny shadows, 

O'ersped with winds at play, 
The woodlands and the meadows 

Are keeping holiday. 
Wild foals are scampering, neighing, 

Brave merles their hautboys blow: 
Come! let us go a-maying 

As In the Long-ago. 

Here we but peak and dwindle: 
The clank of chain and crane. 

The whir of crank and spindle 
Bewilder heart and brain; 



I50 ECHOES 

The ends of our endeavour 

Are merely wealth and fame, 
Yet In the still Forever 

We're one and all the same; 
Delaying, still delaying, 

We watch the fading west: 
Come! let us go a-maying. 

Nor fear to take the best. 

Yet beautiful and spacious 

The wise, old world appears. 
Yet frank and fair and gracious 

Outlaugh the jocund years. 
Our arguments disputing, 

The universal Pan 
Still wanders fluting — fluting — 

Fluting to maid and man. 
Our weary well-a-waying 

His music cannot still: 
Come! let us go a-maying. 

And pipe with him our fill. 

Where wanton winds are flowing 
Among the gladdening grass; 



ECHOES 151 

Where hawthorn brakes are blowing, 

And meadow perfumes pass; 
Where morning's grace is greenest, 

And fullest noon's of pride; 
Where sunset spreads serenest. 

And sacred night's most wide; 
Where nests are swaying, swaying. 

And spring's fresh voices call. 
Come! let us go a-maying, 

And bless the God of all! 

1878 



IS2 ECHOES 



XXIX 

To R. L. S. 

A CHILD, 

Curious and innocent, 

Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing 

Loses himself in the Fair. 

Thro' the jostle and din 
Wandering, he revels. 
Dreaming, desiring, possessing; 
Till, of a sudden 
Tired and afraid, he beholds 
The sordid assemblage 
Just as it is; and he runs 
With a sob to his Nurse 
(Lighting at last on him), 
And in her motherly bosom 
Cries him to sleep. 



ECHOES 153 

Thus thro' the World, 

Seeing and feeling and knowing, 

Goes Man: till at last. 

Tired of experience, he turns 

To the friendly and comforting breast 

Of the old nurse. Death. 

1876 



154 ECHOES 



XXX 

Kate-a-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams, 

Still debating, still delay, 
And the world's a ghost that gleams — 

Wavers — vanishes away! 

We must live while live we can; 

We should love while love we may. 
Dread in women, doubt in men . . . 

So the Infinite runs away. 

1876 



ECHOES iss 



XXXI 

O, HAVE you blessed, behind the stars, 

The blue sheen In the skies, 
When June the roses round her calls? — 
Then do you know the light that falls 

From her beloved eyes. 

And have you felt the sense of peace 
That morning meadows give? — 

Then do you know the spirit of grace, 

The angel abiding in her face, 
Who makes it good to live. 

She shines before me, hope and dream, 

So fair, so still, so wise. 
That, winning her, I seem to win 
Out of the dust and drive and din 

A nook of Paradise. 

1877 



iS6 ECHOES 

XXXII 

To D. H. 

O, Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the 

bay, 
And I wish from my heart it's there I was 

to-day ; 
I wish from my heart I was far away from here, 
Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear. 
For it's home, dearie, home — it's home I 

want to be. 
Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to 

sea. 
O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie 

birken tree 
They're all growing green in the old 
countrie. 

In Baltimore a-walking a lady I did meet 
With her babe on her arm, as she came down 

the street; 
And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle 

standing ready 
For the pretty little babe that has never seen its 

daddie. 

And it's home, dearie, home . . . 



ECHOES 157 

O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring; 
And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king: 
With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket 

blue 
He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie 

used to do. 
And it's home, dearie, home . . . 

O, there's a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the 

west. 

And that of all the winds is the one I like the 

best. 

For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our 

pennon free. 

And it soon will blow us home to the old 

countrie. 

For it's home, dearie, home — it's home I 

want to be. 

Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to 

sea. 

O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie 

birken tree 

They're all growing green in the old 

countrie. 

1878 

Note — The burthen and the third stanza are old. 



158 ECHOES 



XXXIII 

The ways are green with the gladdening sheen 

Of the young year's fairest daughter. 
O, the shadows that fleet o'er the springing 
wheat ! 

O, the magic of running water! 
The spirit of spring is in every thing, 

The banners of spring are streaming, 
We march to a tune from the fifes of June, 

And life's a dream worth dreaming. 

It's all very well to sit and spell 

At the lesson there's no gainsaying; 
But what the deuce are wont and use 

When the whole mad world's a-maying? 
When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows. 

And the air's with love-motes teeming, 
When fancies break, and the senses wake, 

O, life's a dream worth dreaming! 



ECHOES IS9 

What Nature has writ with her lusty wit 

Is worded so wisely and kindly 
That whoever has dipped in her manuscript 

Must up and follow her blindly. 
Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme 

In the being and the seeming, 
And they that have heard the overword 

Know life's a dream worth dreaming. 

1878 



i6o ECHOES 



XXXIV 

To K. DE M. 

Lo<ve blows as the wind bloivs, 
Love bloivs into the heart. — 

NILE Boat -Song. 

Life in her creaking shoes 
Goes, and more formal grows, 
A round of calls and cues : 
Love blows as the wind blows. 
Blows ! ... in the quiet close 
As in the roaring mart. 
By ways no mortal knows 
Love blows into the heart. 

The stars some cadence use, 

Forthright the river flows, 

In order fall the dews, 

Love blows as the wind blows: 

Blows ! . . . and what reckoning shows 

The courses of his chart? 

A spirit that comes and goes, 

Love blows into the heart. 

1878 



ECHOES i6i 



XXXV 
I. M. 

MARGARITiE SORORI 

(1886) 

A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies; 

And from the west, 

Where the sun, his day's work ended, 

Lingers as in content, 

There falls on the old, grey city 

An influence luminous and serene, 

A shining peace. 

The smoke ascends 

In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires 
Shine, and are changed. In the valley 
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, 
Closing his benediction, 



i62 ECHOES 

Sinks, and the darkening air 

Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night — 

Night with her train of stars 

And her great gift of sleep. 

So be my passing! 

My task accomplished and the long day done, 

My wages taken, and In my heart 

Some late lark singing, 

Let me be gathered to the quiet west, 

The sundown splendid and serene, 

Death. 



ECHOES 



163 



XXXVI 

I GAVE my heart to a woman — 
I gave it her, branch and root. 

She bruised, she wrung, she tortured. 
She cast it under foot. 

Under her feet she cast It, 
She trampled it where it fell. 

She broke it all to pieces, 
And each was a clot of hell. 

There in the rain and the sunshine 
They lay and smouldered long; 

And each, when again she viewed them, 
Had turned to a living song. 



i64 ECHOES 



XXXVII 

To W. A. 

Or ever the knightly years were gone 
With the old world to the grave, 

I was a King in Babylon 

And you were a Christian Slave. 

I saw, I took, I cast you by, 
I bent and broke your pride. 

You loved me well, or I heard them lie, 
But your longing was denied. 

Surely I knew that by and by 
You cursed your gods and died. 

And a myriad suns have set and shone 

Since then upon the grave 
Decreed by the King of Babylon 

To her that had been his Slave. 

The pride I trampled is now my scathe. 
For it tramples me again. 



ECHOES 165 

The old resentment lasts like death, 

For you love, yet you refrain. 
I break my heart on your hard unfaith. 

And I break my heart in vain. 

Yet not for an hour do I wish undone 

The deed beyond the grave, 
When I was a King in Babylon 

And you were a Virgin Slave. 



i66 ECHOES 



XXXVIII 

On the way to Kew, 

By the river old and gray, 

Where in the Long Ago, 

We laughed and loitered so, 

I met a ghost to-day, 

A ghost that told of you — 

A ghost of low replies 

And sweet. Inscrutable eyes 

Coming up from Richmond 

As you used to do. 

By the river old and gray, 
The enchanted Long Ago 
Murmured and smiled anew. 
On the way to Kew, 
March had the laugh of May, 
The bare boughs looked aglow, 
And old immortal words 
Sang in my breast like birds. 
Coming up from Richmond 
As I used with you. 



ECHOES 167 

With the life of Long Ago 
Lived my thought of you. 
By the river old and gray 
Flowing his appointed way 
As I watched I knew 
What is so good to know — 
Not in vain, not in vain, 
Shall I look for you again 
Coming up from Richmond 
On the way to Kew. 



i68 ECHOES 



XXXIX 

The Past was goodly once, and yet, when all is 

said, 
The best of it we know is that it's done and dead. 

Dwindled and faded quite, perished beyond 

recall. 
Nothing is left at last of what one time was all. 

Coming back like a ghost, staring and lingering 

on, 
Never a word it speaks but proves it dead and 

gone. 

Duty and work and joy — these things it cannot 

give ; 
And the Present is life, and life is good to live. 

Let it lie where it fell, far from the living sun, 
The Past that, goodly once, is gone and dead 
and done. 



ECHOES 



169 



XL 



The spring, my dear, 
Is no longer spring. 
Does the blackbird sing 
What he sang last year? 
Are the skies the old 
Immemorial blue? 
Or am I, or are you, 
Grown cold? 

Though life be change, 
It is hard to bear 
When the old sweet air 
Sounds forced and strange. 
To be out of tune. 
Plain You and I . . . 
It were better to die, 
And soon 1 



I70 ECHOES 



XLI 

To R. A. M. S. 

The Spirit of Wine 
Sang in my glass, and I listened 
With love to his odorous music, 
His flushed and magnificent song. 

*I am health, I am heart, I am life! 



For I give for the asking 

The fire of my father, the Sun, 

And the strength of my mother, the Earth. 

Inspiration in essence, 

I am wisdom and wit to the wise, 

His visible muse to the poet, 

The soul of desire to the lover, 

The genius of laughter to all. 

'Come, lean on me, ye that are weary! 
Rise, ye faint-hearted and doubting! 
Haste, ye that lag by the way! 
I am Pride, the consoler; 



ECHOES 171 

Valour and Hope are my henchmen; 
I am the Angel of Rest. 

'I am life, I am wealth, I am fame: 
For I captain an army 
Of shining and generous dreams; 
And mine, too, all mine, are the keys 
Of that secret spiritual shrine, 
Where, his work-a-day soul put by, 
Shut in with his saint of saints — 
With his radiant and conquering self — 
Man worships, and talks, and is glad. 

*Come, sit with me, ye that are lonely, 

Ye that are paid with disdain. 

Ye that are chained and would soar! 

I am beauty and love; 

I am friendship, the comforter; 

I am that which forgives and forgets.' 

The Spirit of Wine 
Sang in my heart, and I triumphed 
In the savour and scent of his music, 
His magnetic and mastering song. 



172 ECHOES 



XLII 

A WINK from Hesper, falling 

Fast in the wintry sky, 
Comes through the even blue, 
Dear, like a word from you . . . 

Is it good-bye? 

Across the miles between us 

I send you sigh for sigh. 
Good-night, sweet friend, good-night: 
Till life and all take flight, 

Never good-bye. 



ECHOES 173 



XLIII 

Friends ... old friends 
One sees how it ends. 
A woman looks 
Or a man tells lies, 
And the pleasant brooks 
And the quiet skies, 
Ruined with brawling 
And caterwauling, 
Enchant no more 
As they did before, 
And so it ends 
With friends. 

Friends . . old friends . . 
And what if it ends? 
Shall we dare to shirk 
What we live to learn? 
It has done its work, 
It has served its turn; 
And, forgive and forget 
Or hanker and fret, 



174 ECHOES 

We can be no more 
As we were before. 
When it ends, it ends 
With friends. 

Friends . . old friends . 
So it breaks, so it ends. 
There let it rest! 
It has fought and won, 
^And is still the best 
That either has done. 
Each as he stands 
The work of its hands 
Which shall be more 
As he was before? . . . 
What is it ends 
With friends? 



ECHOES 175 



XLIV 

If it should come to be, 
This proof of you and me, 

This type and sign 
Of hours that smiled and shone, 
And yet seemed dead and gone 

As old-world wine: 

Of Them Within the Gate 
Ask we no richer fate, 

No boon above, 
For girl child or for boy. 
My gift of life and joy. 

Your gift of love. 



176 ECHOES 



XLV 

To W. B. 

From the brake the Nightingale 

Sings exulting to the Rose; 
Though he sees her waxing pale 

In her passionate repose, 
While she triumphs waxing frail 

Fading even while she glows: 
Though he knows 
How it goes — 
Knows of last year's Nightingale 

Dead with last year's Rose. 

Wise the enamoured Nightingale, 
Wise the well-beloved Rose! 

Love and life shall still prevail, 
Nor the silence at the close 

Break the magic of the tale 

In the telling, though it shows — 



ECHOES 177 

Who but knows 
How it goes 1 — 
Life a last year's Nightingale, 
Love a last year's Rose. 



178 ECHOES 



XLVI 

MATRI DILECTISSIMiE 

I. M. 

In the waste hour 

Between to-day and yesterday 

We watched, while on my arm — 

Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone — 

Dabbled in sweat the sacred head 

Lay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange: 

Till the dear face turned dead, 

And to a sound of lamentation 

The good, heroic soul with all its wealth — 

Its sixty years of love and sacrifice, 

Suffering and passionate faith — was reabsorbed 

In the inexorable Peace, 

And life was changed to us for evermore. 

Was nothing left of her but tears 
Like blood-drops from the heart? 



ECHOES 179 

Nought save remorse 

For duty unfulfilled, justice undone, 

And charity ignored? Nothing but love, 

Forgiveness, reconcilement, where in truth, 

But for this passing 

Into the unimaginable abyss 

These things had never been? 

Nay, there were we, 

Her five strong sons! 

To her Death came — the great Deliverer 

came ! — 
As equal comes to equal, throne to throne. 
She was a mother of men. 



The stars shine as of old. The unchanging River, 

Bent on his errand of immortal law. 

Works his appointed way 

To the immemorial sea. 

And the brave truth comes overwhelmingly 

home : — 
That she in us yet works and shines. 
Lives and fulfils herself, 
Unending as the river and the stars. 



i8o ECHOES 

Dearest, live on 

In such an Immortality 

As we thy sons, 

Born of thy body and nursed 

At those wild, faithful breasts, 

Can give — of generous thoughts. 

And honourable words, and deeds 

That make men half In love with fate! 

Live on, O brave and true. 

In us thy children. In ours whose life Is thine — 

Our best and theirs I What is that best but thee — 

Thee, and thy gift to us, to pass 

Like light along the Infinite of space 

To the Immitigable end? 

Between the river and the stars, 

O royal and radiant soul. 

Thou dost return, thine Influences return 

Upon thy children as in life and death 

Turns stingless! What is Death 

But Life In act? How should the Unteeming 

Gray 
Be victor over thee. 
Mother, a mother of men? 



ECHOES i8i 



XLVII 

Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me. 
One or two women (God bless them!) have 

loved me. 
I have worked and dreamed, and I've talked at 

will. 
Of art and drink I have had my fill. 
I've comforted here, and I've succoured there. 
I've faced my foes, and I've backed my friends. 
I've blundered, and sometimes made amends. 
I have prayed for light, and I've known despair. 
Now I look before, as I look behind. 
Come storm, come shine, whatever befall, 
With a grateful heart and a constant mind, 
For the end I know is the best of all. 

1888-1889 



LONDON 
VOLUNTARIES 

(To Charles Whibley) 
1890-1892 



Grave 

St. Margaret's bells, 

Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles, 

Sing in the storied air. 

All rosy-and-golden, as with memories 

Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas 

Disconsolate for that the night is nigh. 

O, the low, lingering lights I The large last 

gleam 
(Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and 

call!) 
Touching these solemn ancientries, and there, 
The silent River ranging tide-mark high 
And the callow grey-faced Hospital, 
With the strange glimmer and glamour of a 

dream! 
The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees. 
And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky 

(Hark! how those plangent comforters call and 
cry!) 

Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall. 
The sober Sabbath stir — 

i8s 



i86 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 

Leisurely voices, desultory feet! — 

Comes from the dry, dust-coloured street. 

Where in their summer frocks the girls go by, 

And sweethearts lean and loiter and confer. 

Just as they did an hundred years ago, 

Just as an hundred years to come they will: — 

When you and I, Dear Love, lie lost and low, 

And sweet-throats none our welkin shall fulfil 

Nor any sunset fade serene and slow; 

But, being dead, we shall not grieve to die. 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 187 



II 

Andante con moto 

Forth from the dust and din, 

The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare. 

The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, 

The wrangle and jangle of unrests, 

Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and 

win — 
As from swart August to the green lap of May — 
To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts 
Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware 
In any of her innumerable nests 
Of that first sudden plash of dawn 
Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, 
Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day 
In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn 
Forward and up, in wider and wider way, 
Shall float the sands, and brim the shores. 
On this our lith of the World, as round it roars 
And spins into the outlook of the Sun 
(The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial 

charge). 



i88 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 

With light, with living light, from marge to 

marge 
Until the course He set and staked be run. 

Through street and square, through square and 

street. 
Each with his home-grown quality of dark 
And violated silence, loud and fleet. 
Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp. 
The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O, 

hark, 
Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain 
Ring back a rough refrain 
Upon the marked and cheerful tramp 
Of her four shoes 1 Here is the Park, 
And O, the languid midsummer wafts adust, 
The tired midsummer blooms 1 
O, the mysterious distances, the glooms 
Romantic, the august 

And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees 
Turns to a tryst of vague and strange 
And monstrous Majesties, 

Let loose from some dim underworld to range 
These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: 
When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 189 

Beggared and common, plain to all the land 

For stocks of leaves ! And lo ! the Wizard Hour, 

His silent, shining sorcery winged with power ! 

Still, still the streets, between their carcanets 

Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep. 

But see how gable ends and parapets 

In gradual beauty and significance 

Emerge ! And did you hear 

That little twitter-and-cheep, 

Breaking inordinately loud and clear 

On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 

'TIs a first nest at matins! And behold 

A rakehell cat — how furtive and acold! 

A spent witch homing from some Infamous 

dance — 
Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade 
Through shadowy railings Into a pit of shade 1 
And now! a little wind and shy, 
The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), 
A sense of space and water, and thereby 
A lampllt bridge ouching the troubled sky, 
And look, O, look! a tangle of silver gleams 
And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams, 
His dreams that never save in our deaths can 

die. 



I90 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 

What miracle is happening in the air, 

Charging the very texture of the gray 

With something luminous and rare? 

The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, 

And, as one lights a candle, it is day. 

The extinguisher, that perks it like a spire 

On the little formal church, is not yet green 

Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, 

The corner-lines, the chimneys — look how clean, 

How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, 

Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung 

beam I 
And those are barges that were goblin floats, 
Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and 

dream ! 
And in the piles the water frolics clear, 
The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, 
And we — we can behold that could but hear 
The ancient River singing as he goes, 
New-mailed in morning, to the ancient Sea. 
The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass: 
The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake, 
And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and 

take 
His hobnailed way to work! 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 191 

Let us too pass — 
Pass ere the sun leaps and your shadow shows — • 
Through these long, blindfold rows 
Of casements staring blind to right and left, 
Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece 
Of life in death's own lilceness — Life bereft 
Of living looks as by the Great Release — 
Pass to an exquisite night's more exquisite close 1 

Reach upon reach of burial — so they feel, 
These colonies of dreams! And as we steal 
Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze, 
Fitfully frolicking to heel 

With news of dawn-drenched woods and tumb- 
ling seas, 
We might — thus awed, thus lonely that we are — 
Be wandering some dispeopled star, 
Some world of memories and unbroken graves. 
So broods the abounding Silence near and far: 
Till even your footfall craves 
Forgiveness of the majesty it braves. 



192 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 



III 

Schenando 

Down through the ancient Strand 

The spirit of October, mild and boon 

And sauntering, takes his way 

This golden end of afternoon, 

As though the corn stood yellow in all the land, 

And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon 

Lo ! the round sun, half-down the western slope — 

Seen as along an unglazed telescope — 

Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day: 

Gifting the long, lean, lanky street 

And its abounding confluences of being 

With aspects generous and bland; 

Making a thousand harnesses to shine 

As with new ore from some enchanted mine, 

And every horse's coat so full of sheen 

He looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean, 

And never a hansom but is worth the feeing; 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 193 

And every jeweller within the pale 

Offers a real Arabian Night for sale; 

And even the roar 

Of the strong streams of toil, that pause and 

pour 
Eastward and westward, sounds suffused — 
Seems as it were bemused 
And blurred, and like the speech 
Of lazy seas on a lotus-haunted beach — 
With this enchanted lustrousness. 
This mellow magic, that (as a man's caress 
Brings back to some faded face, beloved before, 
A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore 
Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech) 
Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless 
Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more: 
Till Clement's, angular and cold and staid. 
Gleams forth in glamour's very stuffs arrayed; 
And Bride's, her aery, unsubstantial charm 
Through flight on flight of springing, soaring 

stone 
Grown flushed and warm. 

Laughs into life full-mooded and fresh-blown; 
And the high majesty of Paul's 
Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls — 



194 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 

Calls to his millions to behold and see 
How goodly this his London Town can be! 

For earth and sky and air 

Are golden everywhere, 

And golden with a gold so suave and fine 

The looking on it lifts the heart like wine, 

Trafalgar Square 

(The fountains volleying golden glaze) 

Shines like an angel-market. High aloft 

Over his couchant Lions, in a haze 

Shimmering and bland and soft, 

A dust of chrysoprase. 

Our Sailor takes the golden gaze 

Of the saluting sun, and flames superb, 

As once he flamed it on his ocean round. 

The dingy dreariness of the picture-place 

Turned very nearly bright, 

Takes on a luminous transiency of grace, 

And shows no more a scandal to the ground. 

The very blind man pottering on the kerb 

Among the posies and the ostrich feathers 

And the rude voices touched with all the weathers 

Of the long, varying year. 

Shares in the universal alms of light. 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 195 

The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, 
The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, 
The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and 

spires — 
'Tis El Dorado — El Dorado plain. 
The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, 
Look! as she turns her glancing head, 
A call of gold is floated from her ear! 
Golden, all golden! In a golden glory. 
Long-lapsing down a golden coasted sky, 
The day, not dies but, seems 
Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed 
Upon a past of golden song and story 
And memories of gold and golden dreams. 



196 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 



IV 



Largo e mesto 



Out of the poisonous East, 

Over a continent of blight, 

Like a maleficent Influence released 

From the most squalid cellarage of hell, 

The Wind-Fiend, the abominable — 

The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and 

light — 
Comes slouching, sullen and obscene. 
Hard on the skirts of the embittered night; 
And in a cloud unclean 
Of excremental humours, roused to strife 
By the operation of some ruinous change, 
Wherever his evil mandate run and range, 
Into a dire intensity of life, 
A craftsman at his bench, he settles down 
To the grim job of throttling London Town. 

So, by a jealous lightlessriess beset 
That might have oppressed the dragons of old 
time 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 197 

Crunching and groping In the abysmal slime, 
A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous 

dreams, 
Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, 
The afflicted City, prone from mark to mark 
In shameful occultatlon, seems 
A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting. 
With wavering gulfs and antic heights, and 

shifting. 
Rent in the stuff of a material dark. 
Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and 

pale, 
Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale : 
Uncoiling monstrous Into street on street 
Paven with perils, teeming with mischance. 
Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread. 
Working with oaths and threats and faltering 

feet 
Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; 
Working through wicked airs and deadly dews 
That make the laden robber grin askance 
At the good places in his black romance. 
And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose 
Go pinched and pined to bed 



198 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 

Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched 

way 
From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny 

prey. 

Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, 

His green garlands and windy eyots forgot. 

The old Father-River flows, 

His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom. 

As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, 

Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides. 

Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot 

In the squalor of the universal shore: 

His voices sounding through the gruesome air 

As from the Ferry where the Boat of Doom 

With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides: 

The while his children, the brave ships, 

No more adventurous and fair, 

Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound 

brides. 
But infamously enchanted. 
Huddle together in the foul eclipse, 
Or feel their course by inches desperately. 
As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, 
From sinister reach to reach out — out — to sea. 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 199 

And Death the while — 

Death with his well-worn, lean, professional 

smile. 
Death in his threadbare working trim — 
Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland 
And with expert, inevitable hand 
Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung 
Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart: 
Thus signifying unto old and young. 
However hard of mouth or wild of whim, 
'Tis time — 'tis time by his ancient watch — to part 
From books and women and talk and drink and 

art. 
And you go humbly after him 
To a mean suburban lodging; on the way 
To what or where 

Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: 
And you — how should you care 
So long as, unreclaimed of hell, 
The Wind-Field, the insufferable. 
Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him down 
To the black job of burking London Town? 



200 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 



Allegro maestoso 

Spring winds that blow 

As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; 

Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, 

Like matrons heavy bosomed and aglow 

With the mild and placid pride of increase I 

Nay, 
What makes this insolent and comely stream 
Of appetence, this freshet of desire 
(Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), 
Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam 
.In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? 
Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and 

churn 
The wealth of her enchanted urn 
Till, over-billowing all between 
Her cheerful margents, grey and living green. 
It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, 
An estuary of the joy of being? 
Why should the lovely leafage of the Park 
Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing? 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 201 

— Sure, sure my paramour, my Bride of Brides, 
Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides 
In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, 
Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, 
In the divine conviction robed and crowned 
The globe fulfils his immemorial round 
But as the marry-place of all things made I 

There is no man, this deifying day. 

But feels the primal blessing in his blood. 

There is no woman but disdains — 

The sacred impulse of the May 

Brightening like sex made sunshine through her 

veins — 
To vail the ensigns of her womanhood. 
None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, 
Bounteous in looks of her delicious best. 
On her inviolable quest: 
These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets 

those. 
But all desirable and frankly fair, 
As each were keeping some most prosperous 

tryst, 
And in the knowledge went Imparadised! 
For look! a magical influence everywhere. 



202 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 

Look how the liberal and transfiguring air 
Washes this inn of memorable meetings, 
This centre of ravishments and gracious greet- 
ings, 
Till, through its jocund loveliness of length 
A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, 
A brimming reach of beauty met with strength. 
It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, 
Some vision multitudinous and agleam, 
Of happiness as it shall be evermore 1 

Praise God for giving 

Through this His messenger among the days 

His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living! 

For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan — 

Not dead, not dead, as impotent dreamers 

feigned. 
But the gay genius of a million Mays 
Renewing his beneficent endeavour! — 
Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed 

and reigned 
Since in the dim blue dawn of time 
The universal ebb-and-flow began, 
To sound his ancient music, and prevails, 
By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme. 



LONDON VOLUNTARIES 203 

Here in this radiant and immortal street 
Lavishly and omnipotently as ever 
In the open hills, the undissembling dales, 
The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. 
For lo ! the wills of man and woman meet, 
Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared, 
As once in Eden's prodigal bowers befell. 
To share his shameless, elemental mirth 
In one great act of faith: while deep and strong, 
Incomparably nerved and cheered. 
The enormous heart of London joys to beat 
To the measures of his rough, majestic song; 
The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell 
That keeps the rolling universe ensphered, 
And life, and all for which life lives to long, 
Wanton and wondrous and for ever well. 



A SONG OF SPEED 



Now there is nothing gives a man such spirit. 
Leaving his blood as cayenne doth a curry. 
As going at full speed. . . . 

What a delightful thing's a turn-pike road! 

So smooth, so level, such a means of shaving 
The Earth is scarce the Eagle in the broad 

Air can accomplish. . . . 

Byron. 



206 



A SONG OF SPEED 

In the Eye of the Lord, 

By the Will of the Lord, 

Out of the infinite 

Bounty dissembled, 

Since Time began. 

In the Hand of the Lord, 

Speed! 

Speed as a chattel: 
Speed in your daily 
Account and economy; 
One with your wines, 
And your books, and your bath — 
Speed 1 

Speed as a rapture: 
An integral element 
In the new scheme of Life 
Which the good Lord, the Master, 
Wills well you should frame 
In the light of His laugh 
And His great. His ungrudging, 
His reasoned benevolence — 
207 



2o8 A SONG OF SPEED 

Speed! 

Speed, and the range of God's skies, 

Distances, changes, surprises; 

Speed, and the hug of God's winds 

And the play of God's airs, 

Beautiful, whimsical, wonderful; 

Clean, fierce and clean, 

With a thrust in the throat 

And a rush at the nostrils; 

Keen, with a far-away 

Taste of inhuman 

Unvlolable Vasts, 

Where the Stars of the Morning 

Go singing together 

For joy in the dazzling, 

Naked, unvlslted 

Emperles of Space! 

And the heart in your breast 

Sings, as the World 

Slips past like a dream 

Of Speed — 

Speed on the Knees of the Lord. 

Speed — 

Speed, and a world of new havings: 



A SONG OF SPEED 209 

Red-rushing splendours 
Of Dawn; the disturbing, 
Long-drawn, tumultuous 
Passions of Sunset; 
And, these twain between, 
The desperate, great anarchies. 
The matchless serenitudes, 
The magical, ravishing. 
Changing, transforming 
Trances of Daylight. 
Speed, and the lap 
Of the Land that you know 
For the first time (it seems). 
As you push through the maze 
Of her beauties and privacies. 
Terrors, astonishments : 
Heath, common, pinewood, 
Downland and river-scape. 
Cherry-orchards, water-meads, 
Forests and stubbles. 
Oak-temples, daisy-spreads, 
Vistas of harebell. 
Hills of the ruggedest. 
Vales of the comeliest; 
Barrows and cromlechs, 



2IO A SONG OF SPEED 

Ancestral ossuaries, 

Whence (you may fancy) 

The troubled gray ghosts 

Of your forefathers peer, 

As you swoop down on them, 

With a wild, wondering 

Pride in their seed; 

Placid and sylvan, 

Stray churchyards that, falling 

Into the village-streets, 

Keep the poor living 

Still in a reverent 

And kindly communion 

With their familiar 

And passioning dead; 

Brooks with fat, comforting. 

Sociable sallows 

Fenced, and still, sleepy-faced 

Lengths of Canal, 

Where the one thing alive 

Is the horse on the tow-path, 

Tugging in dreams 

At the long barge that hangs 

Like a dream on his collar; 

Secular avenues, 



A SONG OF SPEED 211 

Noble alignments 

Of Elms, since a century 

Hailing the Dawns 

And exalting the Sunsets; 

Beech-woods that burn out 

The life in their leafage, 

And figure the death 

Of the Year in a glory 

Of colour and fire; 

Roads, where the stalwart 

Soldier of Caesar 

Put by his bread 

And his garlic, and, girding 

His conquering sword 

To his unconquered thigh. 

Lay down in his armour. 

And went to his Gods 

By the way that he'd made. 

Then the miraculous 

Pageant that shows 

How this Earth of our loves 

And our dreams and our dead 

Presses unwitting 

Back to the sunless, 

Unsouled, disfeatured 



212 A SONG OF SPEED 

Filth of the Prime: 

Brilliant, enchanting 

Visions of Summer, 

Somnolent, stately. 

Gravid and satisfied; 

And Autumn, his hands 

Full of apples; and Winter, 

The old Tyrant we love 

For the sake of his kinswoman. 

Spring with her violets. 

Spring with her Iambs, 

Spring with her old. 

Irresistible mandate. 

The joyous, the reckless 

Compeller of Wombs, 

Spring! And with these 

Smoke, Rain, and Mist 

In their subtle, fantastical 

Moodiness; Gardens 

And Woods in their pleasure. 

Their pride of Increase, 

And their helpless and sorrowful 

Pomp of decay! 

Last, the gray sea, 

The Antlent of Days, 



A SONG OF SPEED 213 

With his secret as new 

After thousands of years 

As it was to the old, 

The alert, aboriginal 

Father of Ships; 

And Speed! 

Speed you conjure 

With a crook of your finger; 

Speed which your touch 

On a core, on a master-bit. 

Breeds for your use; 

As Man's hand on a tiller 

Gives brain to a boat; 

As Man's hand on a pen 

Turns the poor, workaday 

Labourers of language 

Straight into Insolent, 

High, living Song; 

Speed — 

Speed in the Lap of the Lord! 

Trim, naked Speed! 
Speed, and a victory 
Snatched in the teeth 
Of the Masters of Darkness. 



214 A SONG OF SPEED 

For the antient, Invincible 
Spirit of Man, 
Stern-set, adventurous. 
Dreaming things, doing things; 
Strong with a strength 
Won from tremendous 
And desperate vicissitudes, 
Out of unnumbered, 
Unstoried experiences ; 
Fighting the one fight, 
The last and the best fight, 
Hard, and by inchmeal 
Winning it steadily. 
Corner by corner, 
Here a snatch, there a bit, 
Over the black, irresistible 
Legions of Death, 
The Impassive, unfaltering 
Captains and Companies 
Of the primordial 
Powers of the Princedoms 
And Thrones of the Grave; 
Strongly and sternly 
Asserts and approves itself. 
Mightily turns 



A SONG OF SPEED 215 

To its task of attesting 

Its right to a figment, 

A shadow of Deity, 

Full in the Face of the Lord. 

For the Heart of Man 

Tears at Man's destiny 

Ever; and ever 

Makes what it may 

Of his wretched occasions, 

His infinitesimal 

Portion in Time, 

His merely incomputable 

Shred of Eternity, 

His ninety-ninth part. 

If you count by God's clock, 

Of a second on Earth 

In the lust and the pride 

Of God's garment, the Flesh. 

So Woman and War, 

And the Child (the unspeakable 

Promise and proof 

Of a right immortality), 

Learning and Drink, 

And Money and Song, 



2i6 A SONG OF SPEED 

Ships, Folios, and Horses, 

The craft of the Healer, 

The worship of God 

And things done to the instant 

Delight of the Devil, 

And all, all that tends 

To his hard-to-come, swift-to-go 

Glory, are tested, 

Gutted, exhausted. 

Chucked down the draught; 

And the quest, the pursuit. 

The attack and the conquest. 

Of the Unknown goes on — 

Goes on in the Joy of the Lord. 

For, beaten in Time 
From the start to the finish. 
So utterly beaten 
Appeal is impossible, 
The Spirit of Man, 
Enquiring, aspiring; 
Passionately scaling 
Ice-bitten altitudes. 
Neighboured of none 
Save the austere, 



A SONG OF SPEED 217 

Unapproachable Stars; 

Scapes from its destiny, 

Holds on its course 

Of attent and discovery, 

So as to leave. 

When the Lord takes It back to Him, 

The lot of the World 

Something the prouder, 

Something the loftier. 

Something the braver, 

For that it hath done: 

Something the good man, 

The wise man, the strong man. 

Poet or Soldier, 

Maker of Empires 

Or Broker of Diamonds, 

Preacher or Surgeon, 

Or the Inventor: 

Artist In elements. 

Expert in substances, 

Strengths, franglbilitles, 

Points of combustion, 

Points of resistance: 

These, and an hundred, 

A thousand besides 



2i8 A SONG OF SPEED 

Of the right, the authentic 
Talon and pinion, 
Snapping up in a flash 
After years of endeavour 
One of God's messages. 
Do to Man's solacing, 
Pride, and magnificence. 
Under the Feet of the Lord. 

Hence the Mercedes! 

Look at her. Shapeless? 

Unhandsome? Unpaintable? 

Yes; but the strength 

Of some seventy-five horses: 

Seventy-five puissant. 

Superb fellow-creatures : 

Is summed and contained 

In her pipes and her cylinders. 

Mind after mind. 

On fire with discovery, 

Filled full with the fruits 

Of an hundred fat years. 

And mad with the dreams 

And desires of To-Day, 



A SONG OF SPEED 219 

Have toiled themselves dull 

To achieve her components. 

She can stop in a foot's length; 

She steers as it were 

With a hair you might pluck 

From your Mistress's nape; 

She crawls, if you please 

So to lightly her virtue, 

At your Mistress's pace 

When she goes for a stroll, 

Which is partly on Earth 

And partly, She dreaming 

Of You, in broad Heaven. 

Yet ask but a sign, 

But a proof of her quality. 

Handle her valves, 

Her essentials, her secrets, 

And she runs down the birds 

(You can catch them like flies 

As, poor wretches, they race from 

you ! ) ; 
Ay, and becomes. 
As the Spirit and Mind 
Of God's nearest approach 



220 A SONG OF SPEED 

To Himself hath so willed it, 

The Angel of Speed — 

Speed in the Laugh of the Lord. 

There be good things, 

Good things innumerable. 

Held like an alms 

In the clutch of the Master; 

And at times, when He feels 

That His creatures are doing 

Their best to assert 

Their part in His dream, 

He loosens His fist 

And a miracle slips from it 

Into the hands 

Of His adepts and servants. 

Thus, in late years, 

Smiling as Whistler, 

Smiling as Kelvin, 

And Rodin and Tolstoi, 

And Lister and Strauss 

(That with his microbes. 

This with his fiddles!). 

Tugged at His fingers 

And worked out His meanings. 



A SONG OF SPEED 221 

Thus hath he slackened 

His grasp, and this Thing, 

This marvellous Mercedes, 

This triumphing contrivance, 

Comes to make other 

Man's life than she found it: 

The Earth for her tyres 

As the Sea for his keels; 

Alike in the old lands, 

Enseamed with the wheel-ways 

Of thousands of dusty 

And dim generations. 

And in the new countries, 

Whose Winds blow unbreathed. 

And their Lights are first-hand 

From our Father, the Sun. 

Thus the Mercedes 

Come, O, she comes, 

This astonishing device. 

This amazing Mercedes, 

With Speed— 

Speed in the Fear of the Lord. 

So in the Eye of the Lord, 
Under the Feet of the Lord, 



222 A SONG OF SPEED 

Out of the measureless 
Goodness and grace 
In the Hand of the Lord. 
Speed! 

Speed on the Knees, 
Speed in the Laugh, 
Speed by the Gift, 
Speed in the Trust of the Lord- 
Speed I 



RHYMES 
AND RHYTHMS 

1889-1892 



PROLOGUE 

Something is dead . . . 
The grace of sunset solitudes, the march 
Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power 
Of round on round of shining soldier-stars 
Patrolling space, the bounties of the sun — 
Sovran, tremendous, unimaginable — 
The multitudinous friendliness of the sea. 
Possess no more — no more. 

Something is dead . . . 

The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks 

And spreads, the burden of Winter heavier 

weighs 
His meloncholy close and closer yet 
Cleaves, and those incantations of the Spring 
That made the heart a centre of miracles 
Grow formal, and the wonder-working hours 
Arise no more — no more. 

Something is dead . . . 

'Tis time to creep in close about the fire 

22S 



226 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream 
Old dreams and faded, and as we may rejoice 
In the young life that round us leaps and laughs, 
A fountain in the sunshine, in the pride 
Of God's best gift that to us twain returns. 
Dear Heart, no more — no more. 



I 

To H. B. M. W. 

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade 

On desolate sea and lonely sand, 
Out of the silence and the shade 

What is the voice of strange command 
Calling you still, as friend calls friend 

With love that cannot brook delay 
To rise and follow the ways that wend 

Over the hills and far away? 

Hark in the city, street on street 

A roaring reach of death and life, 
Of vortices that clash and fleet 

And ruin in appointed strife. 
Hark to it calling, calling clear. 

Calling until you cannot stay 
From dearer things than your own most dear 

Over the hills and far away ? 
227 



228 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow, 

Out of the sight of lamp and star, 
It calls you where the good winds blow, 

And the unchanging meadows are: 
From faded hopes and hopes agleam, 

It calls you, calls you night and day 
Beyond the dark into the dream 

Over the hills and far away. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 229 



II 

To R. F. B. 

We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He 

gave the word 
That called us into line, set in our hand a sword; 

Set us a sword to welld none else could lift and 

draw. 
And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet 

of the Law. 

East and west and north, wherever the battle 

grew. 
As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will 

to do. 

Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy 

cease — 
(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a 

place of peace!) — 



230 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or 

fire, 
Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the 

Will, our sire. 

Road was never so rough that we left its purpose 

dark; 
Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet 

more stark; 

We tracked the winds of the world to the steps 

of their very thrones; 
The secret parts of the world were salted with 

our bones; 

Till now the name of names, England, the name 

of might, 
Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of 

the boreal night; 

And the call of her morning drum goes in a 

girdle of sound, 
Like the voice of the sun In song, the great globe 

round and round; 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 231 

And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to 

the mother-breeze, 
Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas; 

And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of 

her flowers, 
And the end of the road to Hell with the sense 

of her dews and showers! 

Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us 

fade and die. 
While the living stars fulfil their round in the 

living sky? 

For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their 

father's debt, 
And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw 

was set; 

And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none 
shall brave. 

Is but less strong than Time and the great, all- 
whelming Grave. 



232 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 



III 

A DESOLATE shore, 

The sinister seduction of the Moon, 

The menace of the irreclaimable Sea. 

Flaunting, tawdry and grim. 

From cloud to cloud along her beat. 

Leering her battered and inveterate leer, 

She signals where he prowls in the dark alone. 

Her horrible old man, 

Mumbling old oaths and warming 

His villainous old bones with villainous talk — 

The secrets of their grisly housekeeping 

Since they went out upon the pad 

In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: 

Growling, hideous and hoarse. 

Tales of unnumbered Ships, 

Goodly and strong. Companions of the Advance, 

In some vile alley of the night 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 233 

Waylaid and bludgeoned — 
Dead. 

Deep cellared in primeval ooze, 

Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled, 

They lie where the lean water-worm 

Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken 

sides 
Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide. 
Thus fouled and desecrate. 
The summons of the Trumpet, and the while 
These Twain, their murderers, 
Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued. 
Hang at the heels of their children — She aloft 
As in the shining streets, 
He as in ambush at some accomplice door. 

The stalwart Ships, 

The beautiful and bold adventurers I 

Stationed out yonder in the isle, 

The tall Policeman, 

Flashing his bull's-eye, as he peers 

About him in the ancient vacancy, 

Tells them this way is safety — this way home. 



234 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 



IV 

It came with the threat of a waning moon 

And the wail of an ebbing tide, 
But many a woman has lived for less, 

And many a man has died; 
For life upon life took hold and passed, 

Strong in a fate set free, 
Out of the deep into the dark 

On for the years to be. 

Between the gleam of a waning moon 

And the song of an ebbing tide, 
Chance upon chance of love and death 

Took wing for the world so wide. 
O, leaf out of leaf is the way of the land. 

Wave out of wave of the sea 
And who shall reckon what lives may live 

In the life that we bade to be? 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 235 



Why, my heart, do we love her so? 

(Geraldine, Geraldinel) 
Why does the great sea ebb and flow?- 

Why does the round world spin? 
Geraldine, Geraldine, 

Bid me my life renew: 
What is it worth unless I win, 

Love — ^love and you? 

Why, my heart, when we speak her name 

( Geraldine, Geraldine ! ) 
Throbs the word like a flinging flame? — 

Why does the Spring begin? 
Geraldine, Geraldine, 

Bid me indeed to be: 
Open your heart, and take us in, 

Love — love and me. 



236 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 



VI 

One with the ruined sunset, 
The strange forsaken sands, 

What is it waits, and wanders, 
And signs with desperate hands? 

What is it calls in the twilight — 
Calls as its chance were vain? 

The cry of a gull sent seaward 
Or the voice of an ancient pain? 

The red ghost of the sunset. 
It walks them as its own, 

These dreary and desolate reaches . 
But O, that it walked alone I 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 237 



VII 

There's a regret 

So grinding, so immitigably sad, 

Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. . . . 

Do you not know it yet? 

For deeds undone 

Rankle and snarl and hunger for their due, 
Till there seems naught so despicable as you 
In all the grin o' the sun. 

Like an old shoe 

The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie 
About the beach of Time, till by and by 
Death, that derides you too — 

Death, as he goes 

His ragman's round, espies you, where you stray. 
With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way 
And then — and then, who knows. 



238 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

But the kind Grave 

Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, 
In that black bridewell working out his term. 
Hanker and grope and crave? 

'Poor fool that might — 

That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be. 
Think of it, here and thus made over to me 
In the implacable night!' 

And writhing, fain 

And like a triumphing lover, he shall take 
His fill where no high memory lives to make 
His obscene victory vain. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 239 



VIII 

To A. J. H. 

Time and the Earth — 

The old Father and Mother — 

Their teeming accomplished, 

Their purpose fulfilled, 

Close with a smile 

For a moment of kindness, 

Ere for the winter 

They settle to sleep. 

Failing yet gracious, 

Slow pacing, soon homing, 

A patriarch that strolls 

Through the tents of his children, 

The Sun, as he journeys 

His round on the lower 

Ascents of the blue, 

Washes the roofs 



240 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

And the hillsides with clarity; 

Charms the dark pools 

Till they break into pictures; 

Scatters magnificent 

Alms to the beggar trees; 

Touches the mist-folk, 

That crowd to his escort, 

Into translucencles 

Radiant and ravishing: 

As with the visible 

Spirit of Summer 

Gloriously vaporised, 

Visioned in gold! 

Love, though the fallen leaf 

Mark, and the fleeting light 

And the loud, loitering 

Footfall of darkness 

Sign to the heart 

Of the passage of destiny. 

Here is the ghost 

Of a summer that lived for us, 

Here is a promise 

Of summers to be. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 241 



IX 

'As like the Woman as you can' — 

{Thus the New Adam was beguiled) — 
'So shall you touch the Perfect Man' — 

{God in the Garden heard and smiled). 
Your father perished with his day: 

'A clot of passions fierce and blind, 
He fought, he hacked, he crushed his way: 

'Your muscles, Child, must be of mind. 

'The Brute that lurks and irks within, 

'How, till you have him gagged and bound, 
'Escape the foullest form of Sin?' 

{God in the Garden laughed and frowned) 
So vile, so rank, the bestial mood 

'In which the race is bid to be, 
'It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood: 

'Live, therefore, you, for Purity! 



242 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

*Take for your mate no gallant croup, 

'No girl all grace and natural will: 
*To work her mission were to stoop, 

'Maybe to lapse, from Well to 111. 
'Choose one of whom your grosser make'- 

{God in the Garden laughed outright) - 
'The true refining touch may take, 

'Till both attain to Life's last height. 

'There, equal, purged of soul and sense. 

'Beneficent, high-thinking, just, 
'Beyond the appeal of Violence, 

'Incapable of common Lust, 
'In mental Marriage still prevail' — 

{God in the Garden hid His face) — 
'Till you achieve that Female-Male 

'In Which shall culminate the race.' 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 243 



Midsummer midnight skies, 
Midsummer midnight influences and airs, 
The shining, sensitive silver of the sea 
Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of 

dawn; 
And all so solemnly still I seem to hear 
The breathing of Life and Death, 
The secular Accomplices, 
Renewing the visible miracle of the world. 

The wistful stars 

Shine like good memories. The young morn- 
ing wind 

Blows full of unforgotten hours 

As over a region of roses. Life and Death 

Sound on — sound on. . . . And the night magical, 

Troubled yet comforting, thrills 

As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart 

Of the wood's dark wonderment 

Swung wide his valves, and filled the dim sea- 
banks 

With exquisite visitants: 



244 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires 
With living looks intolerable, regrets 
Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child 
Heard from the grave : shapes of a Might-Have- 
Be en — 
Beautiful, miserable, distraught — 
The Law no man may baffle denied and slew. 

The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze 

To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms. . . . 

Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O, there 

where it fades, 
What grace, what glamour, what wild will, 
Transfigure the shadows? Whose, 
Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours? 

Ghosts — ghosts — the sapphirine air 

Teems with them even to the gleaming ends 

Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts, 

Everywhere — everywhere — till I and you 

At last — dear love, at last ! — 

Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death 

Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 245 



XI 

Gulls in an aery morrice 

Gleam and vanish and gleam . . . 

The full sea, sleepily basking, 
Dreams under skies of dream. 

Gulls in an aery morrice 

Circle and swoop and close . . . 
Fuller and ever fuller 

The rose of the morning blows. 

Gulls, in an aery morrice 

Frolicking, float and fade . . . 

O, the way of a bird in the sunshine, 
The way of a man with a maid! 



246 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 



^ 



XII 

Some starlit garden grey with dew, 
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, 
What matters where, so I and you 
Are worthy our desire? 

Behind, a past that scolds and jeers 
For ungirt loins and lamps unlit; 
In front, the unmanageable years. 
The trap upon the Pit; 

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, 
The scandal of unnatural strife. 
The slur upon immortal needs, 
The treason done to life: 

Arise! no more a living lie. 
And with me quicken and control 
Some memory that shall magnify 
The universal Soul. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 247 



XIII 

To James McNeill Whistler 

Under a stagnant sky, 

Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, 

The River, jaded and forlorn, 

Welters and wanders wearily — ^wretchedly — on; 

Yet in and out among the ribs 

Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles 

Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, 

Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, 

Lingers to babble to a broken tune 

(Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!) 

So melancholy a soliloquy 

It sounds as It might tell 

The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, 

The terror of Time and Change and Death, 

That wastes this floating, transitory world. 

What of the Incantation 

That forced the huddled shapes on yonder shore 




RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

To take and wear the night 

Like a material majesty? 

That touched the shafts of wavering fire 

About this miserable welter and wash — 

(River, O River of Jonrneys, River of Dreams !)- 

Into long, shining signals from the panes 

Of an enchanted pleasure-house, 

Where life and life might live life lost in life 

For ever and evermore? 

O Death ! O Change ! O Time I 
Without you, O, the insufferable eyes 
Of these poor Might-Have-Beens, 
These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays! 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 249 



XIV 

To J. A. C. 

Fresh from his fastnesses 

Wholesome and spacious, 

The North Wind, the mad huntsman, 

Halloas on his white hounds 

Over the grey, roaring 

Reaches and ridges. 

The forest of ocean, 

The chace of the world. 

Hark to the peal 

Of the pack in full cry, 

As he thongs them before him, 

Swarming voluminous, 

Weltering, wide-wallowing, 

Till in a ruining 

Chaos of energy, 



2SO RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Hurled on their quarry, 
They crash into foam! 

Old Indefatigable, 

Time's right-hand man, the sea 

Laughs as in joy 

From his millions of wrinkles: 

Laughs that his destiny. 

Great with the greatness 

Of triumphing order. 

Shows as a dwarf 

By the strength of his heart 

And the might of his hands. 

Master of masters, 
O maker of heroes, 
Thunder the brave. 
Irresistible message : — 
'Life is worth Living 
Through every grain of it. 
From the foundations 
To the last edge 
Of the cornerstone, death.' 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 251 



XV 

You played and sang a snatch of song, 

A song that ail-too well we knew; 
But whither had flown the ancient wrong; 

And was it really I and you? 
O, since the end of life's to live 

And pay in pence the common debt, 
What should it cost us to forgive 

Whose daily task is to forget? 

You babbled in the well-known voice — 

Not new, not new the words you said. 
You touched me off that famous poise, 

That old effect, of neck and head. 
Dear, was it really you and I? 

In truth the riddle's ill to read, 
So many are the deaths we die 

Before we can be dead indeed. 



252 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 



XVI 

Space and dread and the dark — 

Over a livid stretch of sky 

Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train 

Of huge, primeval presences 

Stooping beneath the weight 

Of some enormous, rudimentary grief; 

While in the haunting loneliness 

The far sea waits and wanders with a sound 

As of the trailing skirts of Destiny, 

Passing unseen 

To some immitigable end 

With her grey henchman. Death. 

What larve, what spectre Is this 
Thrilling the wilderness to life 
As with the bodily shape of Fear? 
What but a desperate sense, 
A strong foreboding of those dim 
Interminable continents, forlorn 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 253 

And many-silenced, In a dusk 

Inviolable utterly, and dead 

As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes 

In hugger-mugger through eternity? 

Life — life — let there be life ! 

Better a thousand times the roaring hours 

When wave and wind. 

Like the Arch-Murderer in flight 

From the Avenger at his heel, 

Storm through the desolate fastnesses 

And wild waste places of the world! 

Life — give me life until the end. 

That at the very top of being. 

The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, 

Out of the reddest hell of the fight 

I may be snatched and flung 

Into the everlasting lull. 

The immortal, incommunicable dream. 



254 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 



XVII 

CARMEN PAT IBU LAKE 
To H. S. 

Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook 

And the rope of the Black Election, 
'Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule 

Can never achieve perfection: 
So 'It's O, for the time of the new Sublime 

And the better than Kuman way, 
When the Rat (poor beast) shall come to his 
own 

And the Wolf shall have his day!' 

For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam 

And the power of provocation. 
You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful 
fruit 

Till your thought is mere stupratlon: 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 255 

And 'It's how should we rise to be pure and wise, 

And how can we choose but fall, 
So long as the Hangman makes us dread, 

And the Noose floats free for all?' 

So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign 

And the trick, there's no recalling, 
They will haggle and hew till they hack you 
through 

And at last they lay you sprawling: 
When *Hey! for the hour of the race in flower 

And the long good-bye to sin! 
And the fires of Hell gone out for the lack 

Of the fuel to keep them in!' 

But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough 

And the ghastly Dreams that tend you. 
Your growth began with the life of Man, 

And only his death can end you. 
They may tug in line at your hempen twine. 

They may flourish with axe and saw; 
But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs 

In the living rock of Law, 

And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork, 
When the spent sun reels and blunders 



2s6 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit 
As it seethes in spate and thunders, 

Stern on the glare of the tortured air 
Your lines august shall gloom, 

And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed 
In the ruining roar of Doom. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 257 

XVIII 
I. M. 

MARGARET EMMA HENLEY 

(1888-1894) 

When you wake in your crib, 

You, an inch of experience — 

Vaulted about 

With the wonder of darkness; 

Wailing and striving 

To reach from your feebleness 

Something you feel 

Will be good to and cherish you, 

Something you know 

And can rest upon blindly : 

O, then a hand 

(Your mother's, your mother's I) 

By the fall of its fingers 

All knowledge, all power to you, 

Out of the dreary. 

Discouraging strangenesses 

Comes to and masters you, 



258 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Takes you, and lovingly 
Woos you and soothes you 
Back, as you cling to it. 
Back to some comforting 
Corner of sleep. 

So you wake In your bed, 

Having lived, having loved; 

But the shadows are there, 

And the world and its kingdoms 

Incredibly faded; 

And you grope through the Terror 

Above you and under 

For the light, for the warmth. 

The assurance of life; 

But the blasts are ice-born, 

And your heart is nigh burst 

With the weight of the gloom 

And the stress of your strangled 

And desperate endeavour: 

Sudden a hand — 

Mother, O Mother! — 

God at His best to you, 

Out of the roaring, 

Impossible silences. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 259 

Falls on and urges you, 
Mightily, tenderly, 
Forth, as you clutch at it, 
Forth to the infinite 
Peace of the Grave. 

October 1891 



26o RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 



XIX 

I. M. 

R. L. S. 

(1850-1894) 

O, Time and Change, they range and range 

From sunshine round to thunder ! — 
They glance and go as the great winds blow, 

And the best of our dreams drive under: 
For Time and Change estrange, estrange — 

And, now they have looked and seen us, 
O, we that were dear, we are ail-too near 

With the thick of the world between us. 

O, Death and Time, they chime and chime. 

Like bells at sunset falling! — 
They end the song, they right the wrong, 

They set the old echoes calling: 
For Death and Time bring on the prime 

Of God's own chosen weather, 
And we lie In the peace of the Great Release 

As once in the grass together. 

February 1891 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 261 



XX 

The shadow of Dawn; 

Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams 

Of Life and Death and Sleep; 

Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging 

sound 
Of the old, unchanging Sea. 

My soul and yours — 

O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts, 

Into the ghostliness. 

The infinite and abounding solitudes, 

Beyond — O, beyond! — beyond . . . 

Here in the porch 

Upon the multitudinous silences 

Of the kingdoms of the grave, 

We twain are you and I — two ghosts 

Omnipotence 
Can touch no more ... no more I 



262 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 



XXI 

When the wind storms by with a shout, and the 

stern sea-caves 
Rejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting 

waves, 
Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the 

top of life 
Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of 

strife — 
Till you pity the dead down there In their quiet 

graves. 

But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog 

before. 
When the rain-rot spreads, and a tame sea 

mumbles the shore, 
Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no 

wrong, 
Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your 

sire's old song — 
O, you envy the blessed dead that can live no 

more! 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 263 



XXII 

Trees and the menace of night; 

Then a long, lonely, leaden mere 

Backed by a desolate fell, 

As by a spectral battlement; and then, 

Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, 

A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky. 

So beggared, so incredibly bereft 

Of starlight and the song of racing worlds, 

It might have bellied down upon the Void 

Where as in terror Light was beginning to be. 

Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night 
(Night and the wretchedness of the sky) 
Is it the hurry of the rain ? 
Or the noise of a drive of the Dead, 
Streaming before the irresistible Will 



264 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable 

Land 
Between their place and ours? 

Like the forgetfulness 

Of the work-a-day world made visible, 

A mist falls from the melancholy sky, 

A messenger from some lost and loving soul 

Hopeless, far wandered, dazed 

Here in the provinces of life, 

A great white moth fades miserably past. 

Thro' the trees in the strange dead night, 
Under the vast dead sky, 
Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead 
Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell. 
And the unimagined vastitudes beyond. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 265 



XXIII 

To P. A. G. 

Here they trysted, here they strayed 

In the leafage dewy and boon, 
Many a man and many a maid, 

And the morn was merry June. 
'Death Is fleet, Life Is sweet,' 

Sang the blackbird In the may; 
And the hour with flying feet. 

While they dreamed, was yesterday. 

Many a maid and many a man 

Found the leafage close and boon; 
Many a destiny began — 

O, the morn was merry June I 
Dead and gone, dead and gone, 

(Hark the blackbird In the may!), 
Life and Death went hurrying on. 

Cheek on cheek — and where were they? 



266 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Dust on dust engendering dust 

In the leafage fresh and boon, 
Man and maid fulfil their trust — 

Still the morn turns merry June. 
Mother Life, Father Death 

(O, the blackbird In the may!), 
Each the other's breath for breath. 

Fleet the times of the world away. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 267 



XXIV 

To A. C. 

Not to the staring Day, 

For all the importunate questionings he pursues 

In his big, violent voice, 

Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, 

The Trees — God's sentinels 

Over His gift of live, life-giving air, 

Yield of their huge, unutterable selves. 

Midsummer-manifold, each one 

Voluminous, a labyrinth of life, 

They keep their greenest musings, and the dim 

dreams 
That haunt their leafier privacies, 
Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still 
With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile 
Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade, 
And disappearances of homing birds, 



268 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

And frolicsome freaks 

Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs. 

But at the word 

Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, 

Night of the many secrets, whose effect — 

Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread — 

Themselves alone may fully apprehend, 

They tremble and are changed. 

In each, the uncouth individual soul 

Looms forth and glooms 

Essential, and, their bodily presences 

Touched with inordinate significance. 

Wearing the darkness like the livery 

Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, 

They brook — they menace — they appal; 

Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and 

they wring 
Wild hands of warning in the face 
Of some inevitable advance of doom; 
Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing 
As in some monstrous market-place. 
They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, 
In that old speech their forefathers 
Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 269 

The troubled voice of Eve 

Naming the wondering folk of Paradise. 



Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell 

The tale of their dim life, with all 

Its compost of experience : how the Sun 

Spreads them their daily feast, 

Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine; 

Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude 

And those mild messages the Stars 

Descend in silver silences and dews; 

Or what the sweet-breathing West, 

Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat. 

Said, and their leafage laughed; 

And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain 

Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts 

of the Year 
The sting of the stirring sap 
Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring, 
Their summer amplitudes of pomp, 
Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, 
Embittered housewifery 
Of the lean Winter : all such things. 
And with them all the goodness of the Master, 



270 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

Whose right hand blesses with increase and life, 
Whose left hand honours with decay and death. 

Thus under the constraint of Night 

These gross and simple creatures, 

Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years, 

A servant of the Will! 

And God, the Craftsman, as He walks 

The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of 

cheer 
In thus accomplishing 
The aims of His miraculous artistry. 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 271 



XXV 

V What have I done for you, 

England, my England? 
What Is there I would not do, 

England, my own? 
With your glorious eyes austere, 
As the Lord were walking near. 
Whispering terrible things and dear 

As the Song on your bugles blown, 
England — 

Round the world on your bugles blown! 

Where shall the watchful Sun, 

England, my England, 
Match the master-work you've done 

England, my own? 
When shall he rejoice again 
Such a breed of mighty men 
As come forward, one to ten. 

To the Song on your bugles blown, 
England — 

Down the years on your bugles blown? 



272 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 

V Ever the faith endures, 

England, my England: — 
'Take and break us : we are yours, 

'England, my own! 
'Life is good, and joy runs high 
'Between English earth and sky: 
'Death is death; but we shall die 

'To the Song on your bugles blown, 
'England — 

'To the stars on your bugles blown!' 

They call you proud and hard, 

England, my England: 
You with worlds to watch and ward, 

England, my own! 
You whose mailed hand keeps the keys 
Of such teeming destinies 
You could know nor dread nor ease 

Were the Song on your bugles blown, 
England, 

Round the Pit on your bugles blown! 

Mother of Ships whose might, 
England, my England, 



RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 273 

Is the fierce old Sea's delight, 

England, my own, 
Chosen daughter of the Lord, 
Spouse-In-Chief of the ancient sword. 
There's the menace of the Word 

In the Song on your bugles blown, 
England — 

Out of heaven on your bugles blown! 



EPILOGUE 

These, to you now, O, more than ever now — 

Now that the Ancient Enemy 

Has passed, and we, we two that are one, have 

seen 
A piece of perfect Life 
Turn to so ravishing a shape of Death 
The Arch-Discomforter might well have smiled 
In pity and pride, 

Even as he bore his lovely and innocent spoil 
From those home-kingdoms he left desolate/ 

Poor windlestraws 

On the great, sullen, roaring pool of Time 

And Chance and Change, I know! 

But they are yours, as I am, till we attain 

That end for which we make, we two that are 

one: 
A little, exquisite Ghost 
Between us, smiling with the serenest eyes 
Seen in this world, and calling, calling still 
In that clear voice whose infinite subtleties 
Of sweetness, thrilling back across the grave, 
Break the poor heart to hear: — 

'Come, Dadsie, cornel 
Mama, how long — how long!' 

July 1897 
274 



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